William Craft Brumfield
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The notion of using the Greek noun oneiros (meaning "dream") to form the English adjective oneiric wasn't dreamed up until the mid-19th century. But back in the late 1500s and early 1600s, linguistic dreamers came up with a few oneiros spin-offs, giving English oneirocriticism, oneirocritical, and oneirocritic (each having to do with dream interpreters or dream interpretation). The surge in oneiros derivatives at that time may have been fueled by the interest then among English-speaking scholars in Oneirocritica, a book about dream interpretation by 2nd-century Greek soothsayer Artemidorus Daldianus. In the 17th century, English speakers also melded Greek oneiros with the combining form -mancy ("divination") to create oneiromancy, meaning "divination by means of dreams."
Examples of oneiric in a Sentence
Sam Worley, Vulture, 4 Mar. 2025
Wary of having to make a film in multiple languages in order to sell to international distributors, Dreyer opted for minimal dialogue, which enhances the unsettling atmosphere evoked by cinematographer Rudolph Maté’s use of oneiric soft focus.
—Wilson Chapman, IndieWire, 17 Sep. 2024
Its oneiric nature can’t be reduced to its unproduced TV pilot origins (complete with unexplored narrative threads restructured as suggestive visions), or to Mary Sweeney’s hazy dissolves and Peter Deming’s eerily soft photography, or to the myriad performances that literally feel offbeat.
—Indiewire Staff, IndieWire, 12 Aug. 2024
There is an oneiric, almost haunting quality to Sarai’s writing that is bolstered by the book’s images.
—Ana Karina Zatarain, The New Yorker, 24 Feb. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Oneiric.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oneiric. Accessed 3 May. 2025.
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