How to Use pipe dream in a Sentence

pipe dream

noun
  • His plan for starting his own business was just a pipe dream.
  • Friends called it a pipe dream.
    — Matthew Sedacca, Curbed, 5 Nov. 2025
  • That would have been a pipe dream.
    — Ryan Gajewski, HollywoodReporter, 2 Sep. 2025
  • So that's kind of a pipe dream of mine.
    — Jay Stahl, USA Today, 10 Mar. 2026
  • But that seems to be a bit of a pipe dream.
    — Jon Martindale, PC Magazine, 15 May 2026
  • The stalker pipe dreams need to stop here.
    — Micah McCartney, MSNBC Newsweek, 5 Nov. 2025
  • That last one is more of a pipe dream, but who knows where life may take me.
    — Josh Newman, The Salt Lake Tribune, 30 July 2021
  • Crow has a pipe dream that Swift will one day return.
    — Bryan West, The Tennessean, 13 Aug. 2025
  • Crow has a pipe dream that Swift will one day return.
    — Bryan West, Nashville Tennessean, 12 Aug. 2025
  • Expecting it to be now seems like a pipe dream.
    — Jace Frederick, Twin Cities, 17 Oct. 2025
  • Soon, our plans for a big family seemed more like a pipe dream.
    — Claire Gibson, Marie Claire, 1 Oct. 2018
  • Just a few months ago, reaching the glitzy checkpoint was a pipe dream.
    — Los Angeles Times, 8 July 2022
  • But as each day passes, that feels more a pipe dream than a solid plan.
    — cincinnati.com, 10 Dec. 2020
  • In this world, the golden mean does not exist and equipoise is a pipe dream.
    — Kent Sepkowitz, CNN, 5 Nov. 2022
  • These all may sound like a pipe dream, but our moment requires large-scale change.
    — Dan Perry, Newsweek, 17 Dec. 2024
  • Moving to Europe may feel like a pipe dream for many.
    — Lydia Mansel, Travel + Leisure, 10 Mar. 2026
  • The Bears have lost three in a row, and a playoff run looks like a pipe dream.
    — Lorenzo Reyes, USA TODAY, 9 Nov. 2020
  • That achievement was decades in the making, and for most of that time seemed a pipe dream.
    — Ed Whelan, National Review, 14 July 2022
  • In other corners of the world, that may be only a pipe dream.
    — David McGrath, Chicago Tribune, 6 July 2024
  • Our fantasies of a working shrink ray are merely a pipe dream?
    — Eric Spitznagel, Popular Mechanics, 21 June 2019
  • The notion of a championship seems very far away, a pipe dream.
    — Mirjam Swanson, Orange County Register, 14 Sep. 2024
  • But their plan for transforming it into a venue isn’t a pipe dream.
    — Curbed Editors, Curbed, 1 Jan. 2025
  • For the Palestinians, a state of their own seems like a pipe dream.
    — Ilan Goldenberg, Foreign Affairs, 21 June 2021
  • Still, there are signs that seizing the Senate is no longer a pipe dream.
    — Washington Post, 26 Apr. 2018
  • Still, there are signs that seizing the Senate is no longer a pipe dream.
    — Bill Barrow and Thomas Beaumont, chicagotribune.com, 25 Apr. 2018
  • The world of real-time payments is no longer a pipe dream of the near-future.
    — Rey Mashayekhi, Fortune, 31 Aug. 2019
  • The idea of scanning all of the world's fish had once been a pipe dream that threatened to take decades.
    — National Geographic, 21 July 2016
  • Economists on both sides of the aisle say that hopes of clawing back that cash is a pipe dream.
    — Alana Abramson, Time, 2 Mar. 2021
  • Some might call it a pipe dream, but our best minds are working to bring Facebook back.
    — Sauleha Kamal, The New Yorker, 30 July 2023
  • As of now, this scenario is far more of a pipe dream than reality.
    — Kevin McCormick, MSNBC Newsweek, 6 Aug. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'pipe dream.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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