Dream Words

It’s been said English is the only language in the world where you can park in a driveway and drive in a parkway. This mildly amusing word play can’t hold a candle to dream words.

I’ve been decoding dreams over the last decade and encountered the most intriguing word and letter combinations. In this blog I’m going to show you what I’ve learned over the years about dream words.

Metaphor is the language of dreams, but when you see or hear words within a dream you can very often find the answer in their literal meaning. This includes words spoken to you by the deceased, disembodied words, words you read on signs, in books and newspapers. The words you read and hear spoken within a dream can bring everything together and cause the hidden meaning to become clear.

But when it comes to dream words everything isn’t always as it seems.

Can You Read Dream Words?

Dreamers can see dream words and often do. I’ve seen words written on a piece of paper, written in the pages of a book, and hanging in midair against a black background. Seeing words within a dream are not as rare as one might think. Yet not everyone can see words that make sense to them.

In my dream research I’ve found dreamers who report seeing words in their dreams but not being able to understand them because the letters are all jumbled around. Many dreamers have a hard time reading words or written text in their dreams. This causes them to question whether anyone can understand the written word in their dreams. In fact, the myth that no dreamer can read words or even see letters or words in a recognizable form has spread across the internet.

As one dreamer posted in Reddit Dreams:

I can swear I’ve read in my dream a few nights ago and last night. I don’t fully remember reading words, but I for sure know I’ve read numbers. But I do think that I’ve also read words. How? Because I thought you couldn’t read in your dreams.

Another similar post reads.

I thought it was impossible to read in dreams, like letters and words wouldn’t make sense. In the dream I was in, I could read everything. I could read words on my phone, store names, etc. Does this mean anything?

Well, yes, it means that not being able to read words that make sense in a dream is a myth. Some dreamers can’t do it, but many dreamers can. Being able to read in a dream also has specific meaning depending on what’s read.

What Does it Mean When You Can Read Words?

The things you see and experience within your dreams are put there for a purpose. Therefore, if you’re able to see and read written words there’s a point to it.

When you see words on a sign or written out in front of you in newspaper headlines or some other way, the words you see have a literal meaning; they mean what they say. For the most part, dreamers can find meaning in the words they see in dreams when they are taken literally and not interpreted or decoded.

Tests are a good example of this. While taking tests, dreamers report reading as well as answering essay questions, doing math problems and taking a test where they don’t know any of the answers. These are all instances where dreamers can read within their dreams and they each mean specific things.

When you take a test and are able to answer the questions on that test it means you’re ready for the test life is about to give you. When you’re taking a test and don’t know any of the answers it means you’re not ready for the test life is about to send your way.

Words that are Spoken

Unlike written words, most words you’ll hear spoken within a dream are literal in nature. This is especially true for words that you hear just before you wake up.

I remember a dream I had where I heard these word Aziza as I was waking up. I was going through a difficult time when I heard these words and was conscience of to make a note of everything happening in my dream life. When I looked up Aziza I discovered it was a middle eastern name meaning beloved, precious, and mighty. That single spoken word, which happened to be a name, was such an encouragement for me. It was one of the many kindnesses that helped me face what I needed to face that day.

This name Aziza was really interesting to me. I’d never heard it before. At first, this idea of hearing a name in my dream I’d never heard in my waking life confused me. How could this have happened? Then I remembered the unlimited and eternal nature of dreams. What we dream is not limited by what the dreamer knows and experiences. If it were, how could dreams communicate the sense of the impossible? Flying. Jumping between tall buildings with ease. Elevators that explode out of the top of a building and go into space. These are only a couple of examples off the top of my head where the dreamer experiences something they don’t have a reference for. Hearing a name I’d never heard before seems easy compared to other more impossible things that can happen in a dream.

One of my other spoken word dreams was a dream where I spoke out the words “Hey Google! Build a bridge from me to that thing up high.”

I was in a theater setting, down near one of the seats in the first row. For some reason I wanted to get to the area above the stage where the catwalk was and thought Google was the best way to get there. I shouted out the words telling Google to get me there by building a bridge and it happened.

Some people came into the theater and I wanted to show them how I did it, so I tried a couple of more times, and nothing happened.

I loved the idea of this dream. The fact that I could just speak something out to Google and be able to instantly go to a higher place intrigued me. I did this in a theater, where performance is the point. When I wanted to show others it didn’t work. This dream was telling me that there’s power in my tongue in my words, when I’m not performing for someone to show them what I can do. When I try to do that it doesn’t work.

Incidentally, the word Google is derived from the word goegol, which is a mathematical term meaning a number of nearly incomprehensible size. This gives my dream that impossible feel, telling me that anything’s possible when I use words. This dream takes my relationship with words to another level.

When Dreams are About Words

Words sometimes appear in your dreams as metaphor. Consider the following dream.

I dreamed I pulled two brownish green turtles out of my mouth. I wasn’t in pain and the feeling was amazement. They were alive and wiggly.

At first glance this dream doesn’t appear to be about words. However, the dream does seem to focus on what comes out of the dreamer’s mouth. In fact, our attention seems to be drawn to the turtles, which are a very strange things to come out of anyone’s mouth. Turtles are known to move slow and have a powerful bite. Those characteristics can be attributed to words. In other words, the dreamer may not speak out all that often, but when she does her words have a powerful bite.

Breaking the dream down, we see the dreamer’s feeling of amazement represents the fact her words have impact. The fact the dreamer wasn’t in pain reveals her ability to speak into people’s lives without regret. Said another way, what comes out of the dreamer’s mouth does not come back to bite her. The turtles being alive represent the dreamer’s words live on after they’re spoken.

This dream is highlighting the dreamer’s words because the dream is highlighting the dreamer’s words as important and worthy of realizing they have more of an impact than she thinks they do.

Dreams are often the beginning of a conversation. When you have dreams that feature your mouth or something coming out of your mouth or something coming out of your mouth, the conversation often has to do with what you’re accustomed to saying or what you allow yourself to say.

Word Play

Word play is one of the most creative uses of communication in existence. In waking life word play showcases certain words for the purpose of amusement or some other intended effect. When it comes to dreams, play-on-words is a brilliant dream element that highlights and reinforces significant meaning. If you could only discover it.

  Many times wordplay happens with words that sound alike such as purpose and porpoise, plane and plain, band and banned. Other times dreams utilize word play in different ways. If you find yourself under the bed sheets in your dreams your dream could be putting you in those circumstances to imply you’re “undercover”.

Those are just a few examples of how dreams use the subtle word play on words to highlight certain aspects of your dream, or to communicate an important message. Here’s an example:

“Last night I had the most vivid dream I ever had. It took place in almost every home or apartment I’ve ever lived in dating back to my child hood, (not in my college dorm room, tho). In every house there was an old woman standing with me. All she said was “Hi, my name is Joy.” and on the wall, in red/brown paint were the words “Joy was here.” Then, in my current home were the words “Joy is here.” I woke up feeling alert and spent the next forty minutes checking my house.”

This dream has an interesting word play that the dreamer missed completely. He thought he was being stalked by a ghost. The dream, however, is telling him that joy is present in all the places he’s lived in throughout his life. This dream is an invitation to the dreamer to experience the joy that’s all around him and has been around him throughout his life.

Whatever form words take when they appear in your dreams, take note of them. They may be literal and easy to understand from the start, or a word play that takes days to discover. Making a habit of highlighting the words in your dreams and decoding them. They may communicate a message you need to hear at just the right time.

EB

Photo credit: ✿ Triin Q via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND