Her plans for a movie career are just a pipe dream.
Origin
1895-1900, Americanism
pipe-dream
[pahyp-dreem] /ˈpaɪpˌdrim/
verb (used without object), pipe-dreamed or pipe-dreamt, pipe-dreaming.
1.
to indulge in pipe dreams; fantasize.
Examples from the web for pipe dream
We may dismiss it as sci-fi fantasy or a spooky pipe dream, but wearables are here.
In this kind of reality, downsizing while maintaining quality is largely a pipe dream.
If he's wrong, he could be squandering a brilliant career in cardiology on a pipe dream.
It may be a pipe dream, but it is certainly a wonderful one.
The doubters conclude from this that solar energy is a pipe dream, hardly worth the effort.
And as we've discussed that appears to be a pipe dream.
It's a pipe dream, a bill lacks both economic sanity and a chance of receiving a presidential signature.
Addressed to the wrong name, before telling her her ambitions were a pipe dream.
Effectively fighting aging is also certainly not a pipe dream.
Even the primitive spear made the flintlock an unpractical pipe dream.
British Dictionary definitions for pipe dream
pipe dream
noun
1.
a fanciful or impossible plan or hope
Word Origin
alluding to dreams produced by smoking an opium pipe
Word Origin and History for pipe dream
n.
1870; the sort of improbable fantasy one has while smoking opium; from pipe (n.1) + dream (n.). Old English pipdream meant "piping."
Slang definitions & phrases for pipe dream
pipe dream
noun phrase
An improbable and visionary hope, ideal, scheme, etc, such as an opium smoker might have: He has some ambitious plans, mostly pipe dreams(1896+)
Idioms and Phrases with pipe dream
pipe dream
A fantastic notion or vain hope, as in I'd love to have one home in the mountains and another at the seashore, but that's just a pipe dream. Alluding to the fantasies induced by smoking an opium pipe, this term has been used more loosely since the late 1800s.