خواب دیدن

What it means

خواب دیدن (khâb didan) means “to dream”, literally “to see a sleep/dream.” Pure Persian compound verb, A2 vocabulary. Persian conceives of dreams as something one sees rather than something one has.

How to use it

• دیشب خواب دیدم (dishab khâb didam) “Last night I had a dream”
• خواب تو را دیدم (khâb-e to râ didam) “I dreamed of you”
• چه خوابی دیدی؟ (che khâbi didi?) “What dream did you have?”

Common pairings

• خواب (khâb) “sleep, dream”
• تعبیر خواب (ta’bir-e khâb) “dream interpretation”
• کابوس (kâbus) “nightmare”
• خواب آشفته (khâb-e âshofte) “troubled dream”

Compound verb structure

This is a دیدن (didan, “to see”) compound: خواب (the noun, “sleep, dream”) + دیدن. Conjugates by inflecting only دیدن, خواب می‌بینم (I dream), خواب دیدم (I dreamed). Present stem of دیدن is بین (bin); past stem is دید (did). Persian dream interpretation is a rich tradition rooted in Joseph’s story in the Quran and the medieval تعبیرنامه (ta’birnâme) genre.

References

• Dehkhoda
• Vajehyab