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Is there a difference between dreamed and dreamt? You might be surprised to find conflicting reports. Some people say that there is no difference. Others say that the two words have different meanings. What’s the real deal?
Dreamt and dreamed are both past tense forms of dream. Dreamt is more common in Britain, while dreamed is more common in other English-speaking countries, including the U.S. Dreamed seems to be more popular than dreamt when talking about sleeping, but when dream has a hopeful, literary sense, dreamt might be used.
Let’s start with the dictionary definition of “to dream.” To dream is to experience visions of thoughts as you sleep. However, you can also dream while you are awake, when you envision an event, hope for something, or just daydream. To illustrate, here is a quote from Epigrams by Oscar Wilde:
Oh, I dream of dragons with gold and silver scales, and scarlet flames coming out of their mouths, of eagles with eyes made of diamonds that can see over the whole world at once, of lions with yellow manes and voices like thunder. . .
In addition to definitions, you can also search for the past tense of verbs in a dictionary. Merriam-Webster.com lists two forms for dream—dreamed and dreamt. So, the two words have at least one thing in common; they function as the past tense of dream. As you probably guessed, which one you favor depends on where you live. In all varieties of English except British, dreamed is the most common form by a landslide. However, in the United Kingdom, dreamt is almost as prevalent. Here are a couple of examples of dreamed and dreamt, both from ESPN sites. Pay attention to the meaning. Do you see a difference?
“Our goal is gold―we’ve dreamt about it from when we were little kids, laying in bed dreaming about it, getting that gold medal put around our necks on the podium.” ―ESPN W
Cristiano Ronaldo said Portugal [has] “dreamed” of making the final of Euro 2016 “since the very beginning.” ―ESPN FC
Don’t worry if you couldn’t find a difference. There really wasn’t one. Both sentences use dream in the sense of “to hope” for a future goal. Dreamt, if it is chosen, is most often used in this capacity. Writers talking about a sleep state or a waking fantasy are more likely to choose dreamed, as you will find in these literary examples:
He no longer dreamed of storm, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor his wife. He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach. . . . He never dreamed about the boy. ―Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
I dreamed I flung the violin into a brackish, wind-rippled slough, where the glue would slowly soften until it fell to pieces. I dreamed I laid it on the frozen ground and stepped on it, crushing the thin shell into jigsaw shards. ―Marta Iyer, The Pilgrim’s Book of Hours: A Baroque Migration
Besides the preference for dreamed over dreamt when refering to sleep or fantasy, some writers favor dreamed when duration matters. Here is the dreamt spelling in a sentence where duration is unimportant: The dog dreamt of bones last night. Does it matter whether the dream lasted three or five minutes? No, the main point is that the dog’s dream was about bones. Now, consider this sentence where duration is important: The dog dreamed of bones all night. Now, the focus is on how those bones filled the dog’s dream so much that he dreamed of nothing else. Other times, people decide which form to use based on other factors. For example, consider the “I dreamed a dream” lyrics from Les Misérables. Perhaps the composer just didn’t think “I dreamt a dream” sound right with the melody.
If someone asked you what your dreams were about last night, how would you answer? Would you say, “I dreamed of. . .” Or would you say, “I dreamt of. . .”? If you are British, dreamt is almost as likely a choice as dreamed. American English speakers would probably opt for dreamed, but they are both acceptable options. What is the difference between dreamed and dreamt? You know the answer to that, but what about learned vs. learnt?
This poll is part of a series that Grammarly is running aimed at better understanding how the public feels about writing, language learning, and grammar.
Please take the poll and share your thoughts in the comments. We can’t wait to hear from you!
If you are interested in more, check out last week’s poll.
This poll is part of a series that Grammarly is running aimed at better understanding how the public feels about writing, language learning, and grammar.
Please take the poll and share your thoughts in the comments. We can’t wait to hear from you!
If you are interested in more, check out last week’s poll.
Do you know what a dord is? No? Well, don’t try looking it up in the dictionary, unless the dictionary is Webster’s Second New International Dictionary of 1934. This strange little word appeared only in that one edition, and it spent a whole five years there, happily, before being discovered as a fake. You see, “dord” isn’t a real word, even though it appeared in a dictionary. It was the result of someone misreading a note written by Austin M. Paterson, Webster’s chemistry editor at the time. The note said “D or d, cont./density,” and it referred to the uppercase letter D (or lowercase d) being used as an abbreviation for density. “D or d” became “dord,” a word that meant “density,” and the best-known example of a ghost-word—a word that, in fact, isn’t a word at all.
The Oxford Dictionary defines ghost word as “a word recorded in a dictionary or other reference work which is not actually used.” Merriam-Webster says a ghost word is “a word form never in established usage.” The term was coined by Professor Walter William Skeat in 1886, well before dord came into existence. In a yearly address to the London Philological Society, Skeat took the opportunity to call out several erroneous words. These included abacot, the misspelling of “a bycoket” (a type of headwear); kimes, which came about as the misspelling of “knives”; and morse, which was a misspelling of “nurse.”
Ghost words existed even before Skeat pointed the phenomenon out. Phantomnation appeared in the 1864 Webster’s Dictionary. It was described as a rare word meaning “appearance of a phantom, illusion,” and it was attributed to the poet Alexander Pope. Pope did indeed have something to do with it, as his Odyssey contains the verse “all the phantom nations of the dead,” but it was a man named Richard Paul Jodrell who, in his practice of solidifying two-word phrases into one (he also coined the word “islandempress,” among many others), made “phantom nation” into a single word and published it in his 1820 book Philology of the English Language.
The 1755 Johnson’s Dictionary defined the word foupe as “to drive with a sudden impetuosity” and noted that the word was out of use. And it was out of use, because it never really existed—it was a product of misreading the word soupe, written with a long s. And soupe was a rare word indeed—it meant “swoop.” The same dictionary also had an entry for adventine, which was a misprint in a Francis Bacon work—the actual word was “adventive.”
Sometimes, ghost words appear in dictionaries on purpose, even though in that case they are called by another name: nihilartikel. Esquivalence is such a word—it was a false entry in the New Oxford American Dictionary. The word was invented by Christine Lindberg, one of the NOAD editors, who defined it as “the willful avoidance of one’s official responsibilities.” The whole thing was part of the dictionary’s strategy for copyright protection. And nihilartikel is a nihilartikel itself—the word originated in a false entry in the German-language Wikipedia. Talk about wordception.
By Sophorn Chhay
Just because you have room for 160 characters in your texts doesn’t mean you should use them all.
In fact, texting experts seem to agree that an ideal text should be short and sweet, especially in a business environment, where the name of the game is brevity. Essentially, focus on quality, not quantity.
This can sometimes be a challenge for people who enjoy being verbose. But keeping your message under 160 characters can be good practice—and it’s still easier than beating Twitter’s 140-character limit.
For those interested in crafting professional messages that get to the point but are also well written, try these strategies:
1 Figure out a reason. To directly promote a sale or event? Build your database? Ask recipients to join a loyalty club or complete their membership profile? Alert your audience to something new in your company or site? Unlike social media, where it’s OK just to say hi or put up a fun picture, professional texts need to have a purpose. Since people are likely to check out a text within a few minutes of it arriving, it needs to get their attention and justify them taking the time to read it.
2 Identify yourself. Even if someone has given approval to receive texts from you and your business, they may not recognize your phone number or name and could immediately reject it as spam. So in the first few lines, identify yourself, either personally or by your company name. It also can help your recipients decide if they want to keep reading or go on to the next text, based on their past experience with your texts.
3 Make it personal. You may be sending the same note to thousands of subscribers, but you can still make it sound like you’re talking directly to each recipient. Try something like “We have a deal we’re sure you’ll enjoy” or “You need to come check this out.”
4 Extend an invitation. If you want customers to come buy from you, invite them to your store or your site. It could be more meaningful for recipients to read “We have a sale we’re sure you’ll enjoy” rather than a general “We’re having a big sale.”
5 Include a link. The link could send people somewhere on your site or to a special landing page for this particular promotion. But send them somewhere—they can receive more details, and you can get useful info about click-throughs.
6 Vary your voice. You can have a general voice for your “everyone” list of recipients. You also can have different categories in your database—maybe “users who like ___ product,” “members of our loyalty club,” or “super shoppers.” If you send separate notes to these groups, use slightly different language—maybe something more casual or informal.
7 Be enthusiastic but professional. You’re not a fifteen-year-old and your audience probably isn’t either, so there’s no reason to go bonkers with exclamation points!!!!! But you can throw in adjectives like “exciting,” “very cool,” or “amazing” to convey how appealing your message or special offer is.
8 Appeal to your customers’ need to improve their lives. You may already be including this lure in your marketing materials, but do it faster here. “Come and save money!” “Get a haircut and look your best!” “Plan ahead!” “Prepare to fall in love with our new dessert menu.” Various studies show that saving money is a prime reason that people join loyalty clubs —supporting a brand is nice, but what’s nicer is helping the budget.
9 Be direct. Sound confident and convincing in your invitation. Instead of saying, “We think you’ll like this,” try “We know you’ll love it.”
Looking at this list, it might seem like quite a lot of instructions and suggestions to keep in mind when you have only 160 characters to work with. The good news is that you’re allowed to practice—the more you write and the more your database grows, the more opportunities you’ll have to nail these.
Sophorn Chhay is an inbound marketer specializing in attracting targeted visitors and generated sales qualified leads. Through Trumpia’s SMS and marketing automation solution, he helps businesses and organizations communicate effectively with their customers or members. Trumpia is offering a free Mobile Marketing Success Kit, so don’t forget to grab your free copy.
Guest post by Erik Bowitz
Grammarly is widely known in the United States as an extremely useful tool for writers looking to quickly and easily write error-free prose. However, there is an even larger, and much less talked about group of writers who are equally enthusiastic about the opportunities Grammarly’s automated proofreader provides: English as a Second Language (ESL) writers.
ESL writers are hungry for writing assistance.
There has always been a large demand for ESL services, mostly revolving around speaking and listening education, but also including reading and writing. While speaking and listening is more easily practiced in a classroom or on the street, it is very much a group-focused activity that happens over the course of daily life. Perfecting writing skills, on the other hand, is a solitary activity that can be very difficult without the right learning aids.
Enter Englist.tw, an organization I founded to provide creative, technical, and English editing services to the island of Taiwan, my second home for the last five years. Being an American living in Taipei, I find myself constantly helping friends and colleagues with small English-related questions – from simple phrasing to more involved grammar correction. This was the catalyst behind starting a full-service English writing service.
Still, for some of those little questions, a contract-based human English editor really isn’t necessary, and that is why I have been a happy affiliate of Grammarly’s this year.
Without native-English speaking friends, many Taiwanese are at a loss as to how to improve their writing quality without spending large amounts of money for professional editors. Microsoft Office doesn’t cut it, and looking up individual words in a dictionary takes forever. So, when people contact Englist.tw looking help with small editing and proofreading tasks I usually recommend them to Grammarly because I know it is a quicker and more financially prudent option for them.
Grammarly works perfectly for ESL writers because it can accompany them everywhere online, from writing papers, editing and sending emails, and even updating their English Facebook statuses (Taiwan has the highest per capita Facebook usage in the world). Because of it’s cross-platform functionality, Grammarly quickly becomes an ESL writer’s constant companion – or at least from what I’ve observed in Taiwan.
In the end, I’ve found that when I recommend Grammarly’s services, everyone wins. Besides receiving generous affiliate commissions from Grammarly referrals, my company builds its reputation in the Taiwanese market as a thoughtful and solutions-oriented service – thanks largely in part to the effectiveness of Grammarly’s tools and the satisfaction of its ESL users.
About the Author
Erik Bowitz is the founder of Englist.tw, Taiwan’s leading provider of flexible professional writing services. In addition to running Englist.tw Erik enjoys immersing himself in Haruki Murakami novels and cycling.
