noun
1. An idle indulgence in fantasy or imagination, usually in avoidance of more productive tasks.
All writers of fiction hope to turn woolgathering into a fruitful occupation.
Synonyms: castle in the air, conceiving, daydream, dream, fancy, fancying, figment of imagination, fond hope, fool's paradise, head trip, imagination, imagining, in a zone, mind trip, musing, phantasm, phantasy, pie in the sky, pipe dream, reverie, stargazing, trip, vision, wish.
adjective
1. Of a dreamy or absent minded nature.
I never regret the daydreaming, but I resent the woolgathering expression that lets others know that I've stopped paying attention.
Synonyms: absent-minded, absorbed, abstracted, airheaded, airheaded, bemused, careless, daydreaming, distracted, distrait, dreaming, dreamy, engrossed, faraway, forgetful, goofing off, head in the clouds, heedless, inattentive, inconscient, lost, mooning, moony, oblivious, out to lunch, pipe dreaming, preoccupied, remote, removed, scatterbrained, space cadet, spacey, spacey, surroundings, unaware of events, unconscious, unheeding, unmindful, unobservant, unthinking, withdrawn.
* I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that this word is a mockery of the actual act of gathering wool from places frequented by sheep, like a pasture or a barn, rather than sheering the wool off the sheep themselves.
** For the purposes of listening to Supertramp, let's say a woolgatherer is a dreamer.
n
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