wool-gathering
noun [mass noun]
Indulgence in aimless thought or dreamy imagining; absent-mindedness: a vacant daze that leads to formless wool-gathering...
- Is the 19 March memo just a bit of wool-gathering by the WTO Secretariat?
- ‘After her first success Alexandra went wool-gathering for some time and stopped working hard in the gym,’ she said.
- Buddhism may be diluted by sloppy New Age enthusiasms, and most non-Buddhist artists may revel in the narcissism, intellectual wool-gathering, conflict, and violence that the religion abhors.
Synonyms
daydreaming, dreaming, building castles in the air, building castles in Spain, reverie, musing, abstraction, preoccupation, brown study, distraction, inattention;
absent-mindedness, forgetfulness
Derivatives
wool-gather
- We can't afford for you to be wool-gathering at a time like this.
- The Congressman is wool-gathered in the assertions that the Reserve banks use Reserve notes (greenbacks in daily circulation) to pay the Government for the bonds.
- He knows that an old man does not collect his thoughts but wool-gathers them, that an old man's legs do not walk but must be lifted, that an old man's hands twitch vagrantly like an infant's in sleep, that an old man's eyes sometimes glow like blown embers and sometimes fade out as swiftly and secretly as dusk.