One night my daughter asked me, "Where is dreamland?" I explained that it's a made-up place you think of while you're asleep, and how everyone has their own. Little kids take things so literally, when we talked about "going to dreamland" at bedtime she probably wondered if it was an actual place she went somehow - but where could it be? Great question.
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2025
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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I think I believed that for a time when I was a kid, that dreamland was a physical place people went to when sleeping
We "go" to lots of things that aren't places. Im going to prove it with this sentence.
Let's not go off the rails.
Can you do it after we go to lunch?
...into space. go figure
I think I'm going to vomit.
Is it nice there?
No, my stomach is going to town with all this regurgitation.
In English, ‘go to’ can be used as the future subjunctive tense of the verb being conjugated.
Sounds fancy. I hope it's not expensive to use.
Planning to go into detail, or was that it?
Go to ass.
if you insist ;-)
I've got to go think about it for a second, and then I get to realize what it meant.
I'm going to go to sleep.
Double going!
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"It's time to achieve unconsciousness, kiddo."
The void calls ceaselessly, child.
you don't go places when you sleep?
As a stress sleepwalker, yes I do.
I wish I did, I don't dream so for me it's pretty much just skipping anywhere from 6 to 10 hours and suddenly it's the next morning.
I sure do. Just last night, I went to a store that was closed. The shopkeeper had hired a very tall and furry troll to guard the store at night. She said the shop is closed, and seemed a bit irritated. We shook hands for no apparent reasons, and then I went away. I sat into a car, we drove off, accidentally drove off road, plowed through the 1 m thick snow, fell off a cliff. We nearly crashed into a house, but somehow managed to land on a road right next to it.
That’s why you don’t try to do your shopping in the middle of the night.
In Spanish, they talk about hunger and thirst as if they are physical objects.
I think that's more that tener (to have) doesn't always mean a physical thing.
As an example in spanish they use tener for age. As in tengo 20 años literally is "I have 20 years" but it means "I am 20"
Or ten cuidado means "take care" or "be careful" but literally is more like "have care". Both phrases use tener in a nonphysical sense in the same way as in english we use "to have". Like to have compassion or to have doubts.
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In Dutch “go” means to go do a thing as well and I use it English in a similar fashion. Never thought of it weird before
Edit-preface: I am not a grammarian. I don’t know what the technical names for the different types of “to” are or if they are even recognized as distinct by experts in the field.
English is does indeed use “go” to mean “go do a thing”, but not with directional “to” (as in “go to the library”).
“Go run!”, “Go running”, “I’m going running”, and “I’m going to run” are all valid uses. (In that last case, the “to” is not a directional “to”, but is actually part of the infinitive verb “to run”, as in “I want to run”). However, you wouldn’t say “Go to run!” to tell someone to run.
"Go to run" could make sense with a causal “to” (“Go, in order that you might run”) but that separates “go” and “run” in to separate actions. Causal “to” is the “to” in “push to open” and “press F to pay respects” this is not the “to” in “go to sleep”
“Go to sleep” feels like it is in the directional sense, like "go to bed"
Edit: Now you’ve got me thinking. “Go to sleep” and “go to bed” are a little unusual . “Go to [location]“ without an article is usually reserved for proper nouns or pronouns (“Go to France”, “go to Curicó”, “go to Walmart”, “go to John“ “go to her”). When the location is a general noun, you usually use an article or a proper/pro-noun in the possessive form (“go to a restaurant”, “go to the party”, “go to Bob’s house”, “go to your room”). So what makes “bed” and “sleep” so special? The only other case I can think of at the moment is “go to ground” and that is different because it is an idiom, and the rule for idioms is “they mean what they mean”
Edit-edit: meals don’t use an article either: “to lunch”, “to dinner”, “to breakfast”.
Edit-edit-edit: AAAAAH! It applies to some other prepositions too: “in bed”, “at lunch”; but not “under the bed”. What is going on‽
Edit-edit-edit-edit: Causal “to” might be a use of the infinitive case?
Edit-edit-edit-edit-edit: “go to work” does not use an article either.
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The word "go" has lots of meanings besides physically moving to a place. It also means to change state ("the milk went bad", "he'll go crazy when he finds out") and to indicate immediate future tense ("I'm going to read this book now"). Not to mention some other less relevant uses.
If you have trouble going to sleep then try falling asleep instead.
I wish it was. I wish it was...
Yeah I think it's going to make me go insane
I'm going to go, to my bed, to sleep.
It's a state.
I'm 90% sure that it was originally in the form of "to go <there/place> and " and has just been shortened over time. A refined colloquialism, if you go for that sort of thing
Sleep is my go to when I'm tired!
The Dreaming
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Instructions unclear, summoned Cthulhu.
In german we say either say "go" or "laying to sleep/rest"
Huh that's funny, "laying to rest" in English is an expression for burying someone after they have died
Yeah we also say "they are not yet under the world of the living" if someone is still asleep
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We also call the event of publicly watching soccer matches etc. "public viewing" so...
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