Meanings
dreamtime1
- alternativeproscribedAlternative form of Dreamtime.
The dreamtime also conveys certain notions of morality.
2008, Raymond Scupin, Religion and Culture: An Anthropological Focus, page 1862 more examples
Initially, having been denied access to men's society and their secret ceremonies, Munn encountered the dreamtime among women, in the occasion of their daily storytelling.
1993, Tomoko Masuzawa, In Search of Dreamtime: The Quest for the Origin of ReligionIn becoming the ancestral life-force, the ritual principals are "taken out of profane 'becoming'" and are placed within the dreamtime: "Every ritual, and every meaningful act that man performs repeats a mythical archetype; and ... this repetition involves the abolition of profane time and placing of man in a magico-relitious time which has no connection with succession in the true sense, but forms the 'eternal' now of mythical time."
1996, Sarah Franklin, The Sociology of Gender, page 165
Dreamtime2
alternative Dream Time · alternative Dream-time · alternative dreamtime
- Australian Aboriginal mythologyThe time of the creation of the world, by the ancestors out of their own essence.
The tall slender birds were performing a legendary fight in the Dreamtime story – one that the old law had marked on them forever with a wattle of flaming red skin on the back of their heads.
2013, Alexis Wright, The Swan Book, Constable (2016), page 1011 more example
No, Brian Elliott's hobby-horse is not the Jindyworobaks' political links—it is his conviction that they are to be remembered and well respected for their awareness of Aboriginal myth and legend and for their understanding and symbolic poetical use of the alcheringa concept (the Dreamtime myth of the creation of geological Australia and its flora and fauna with the related religious and moral connotations of site-worship and animism) .
1980, Meanjin - Volume 39, page 402Synonyms: Alchera, Alcheringa, Dreaming
Synonyms & antonyms
proper nounThe time of the creation of the world, by the ancestors out of their own essence.
Origin
- Eastern ArrernteAltyerrenge“the Dreaming”
- EnglishDreamtime
A false calque of Eastern Arrernte Altyerrenge (“the Dreaming”), based on the incorrect assumption that the word is related to altyerre (“a dream”) or altyerre areme (“to dream”). "-time" is an addition unrooted in Aboriginal language.
More words from Eastern Arrernte
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Finnish uniaika
- uniaikatime of creation of the world in Australian mythology
French Espaces de rêves
- Espaces de rêvestime of creation of the world in Australian mythology
Cite this entry
dreamtime. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dreamtime
“dreamtime.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dreamtime. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “dreamtime,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dreamtime.
Source: dreamtime on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.