Mind & EmotionGreek → English
Oneiric
/oʊˈnaɪrɪk/adjective
Dreamlike in atmosphere or logic.
The Greek roots
ὄνειρος
óneiros
dream
Literally: “of dreams”
Follow a root:ὄνειρος1 word
The story of the word
Film critics use the word far more than doctors do. Greek had a working vocabulary for the traffic of sleep: the oneiroi were dream-figures with their own two gates in Odyssey 19, horn for the dreams that come true and ivory for the ones that lie. Artemidorus wrote the surviving ancient manual for reading them, the Oneirocritica, in the second century AD.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
oneirologyoneiromancyoneirocritic
In a sentence
The middle section is pure oneiric drift: corridors that reconnect, a staircase going nowhere.