Does 'dreamboat' always refer to a male?

Forums: English, Esl, Grammar
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Hi all?

I'm a male, not a gay.

If I said, "I want to meet my dreamboat,"
would people regard me as a gay as that mostly refers to an attractive male,
even though what I had intended was 'meet my Miss. Right'?

Or it also can indicate a female, which would make me look like
a completely straight guy?

Huh.. English is absolutely such a hard language to learn.

I'd appreciate any of your comments.

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Type: Question • Score: 9 • Views: 7,383 • Replies: 22

@SMickey,

Dreamboat is what I would expect Marsha Brady to say. No one else in the current time period would call either a male or female a dreamboat.

2 Replies

A dreamboat is a very attractive person; it is most often applied to males, so avoid it unless that is what you mean.

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@contrex,

contrex wrote:

A dreamboat is a very attractive person; it is most often applied to males, so avoid it unless that is what you mean.

That's always been my impression of the word. I only heard it associated with women speaking about males. Or males speaking of other males.

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@Linkat,

I'm a S. Korean and I'm not familiar with the name 'Marsha Brady'
but I can assume that she must be someone from long time ago,
and the expression 'dreamboat' is somewhat too old-fashioned to be used.

I got it right?

Thank you. I appreciate your answer.

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@SMickey,

SMickey wrote:

I'm a S. Korean and I'm not familiar with the name 'Marsha Brady'
but I can assume that she must be someone from long time ago,
and the expression 'dreamboat' is somewhat too old-fashioned to be used.

I got it right?

Thank you. I appreciate your answer.

Yes. Marsha Brady was a character on the family sitcom The Brady Bunch (1969). Dreamboat is a very old-fashioned bit of slang.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dreamboat?s=t

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@contrex,

I see. I actually used that expression in my email, and I guess I have to explain to her that wasn't exactly what I had intended to say.

I think I'll have to avoid using it so that they might not get me wrong.
Thanks. I learned a lot.

1 Reply

@tsarstepan,

The person who is referred to as 'dreamboat' is obviously a woman,
whoever the speaker is. Now it has gotten much clearer.

Gracias.

1 Reply

@SMickey,

SMickey wrote:

The person who is referred to as 'dreamboat' is obviously a woman,
whoever the speaker is. Now it has gotten much clearer.

Gracias.

Marsha Brady is a female. Yes. But she was the one using the term dreamboat in regards to a male who she had a crush on.

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@SMickey,

Exactly - Marsha Brady is from an old sit-com or situation comedy. It took place in the 70s and Marsha was the popular teenage girl and would often times refer to cute boys as dreamboats.

So it is appropriate for a teenage girl from the 1970s to call a boy a dreamboat if she thought he was cute.

No one really uses that term now.

If you find a girl attractive (or boy for that matter) now would be hot.

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@SMickey,

You know what if you explain that you didn't realize how the slang is used and be honest, she would probably find it very cute (which is a good thing for a girl to call a boy) and find it very sweet.

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I seriously doubt that adolescents in the 1970s were using dreamboat. The Brady Bunch was intended to appeal to the advetisers' demographic, as were all network television shows in that era. The demographic the advertisers were targeting were middle aged women, the ones who control the household purse strings. Dreamboat is the slang of the 40s and 50s, not the 70s.

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@Setanta,

Can the Brits get a go here?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHtLPjKnrYs

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Dreamboat is the slang of the 40s and 50s, not the 70s.

This was certainly true in Britain. It was what girls and women said about boys and men.

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@Setanta,

Well all the kids I knew watched it -- and we were not middle age women -- not even the pre-teen boys.

But now that I think about it - I think this was more in the 60s not 70s that the brady's were popular and/or on TV so I could see it being a carryover from the 50s.

But yeah kids watched it. Funny we had some episodes we dug up on dvd and had the kids watching it on a long ride. They were "digging"it. They thought it was quite groovy.

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@Linkat,

Quote:

Dreamboat is what I would expect Marsha Brady to say. No one else in the current time period would call either a male or female a dreamboat.

Well, it certainly is, I think we can say, much less common but it still sees use in a wide variety of places.

I hope this link will work.

http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/x3.asp?xx=1&w11=dreamboat&r=

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Dreamboat is the slang of the 40s and 50s, not the 70s.

I agree in general, but the word "dreamy" has made a bit of a comeback.

I've heard young ladies use the word to describe a handsome man several times in the past year or two.

One young lady, after meeting Wally, told me afterwards "He's got dreamy eyes"

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@Setanta,

I agree with Set on the timing of the usage of the word dreamboat. As a teen in the fifties, I probably only read the word in some girls' teen magazine, and never heard it myself. More likely I would have seen the word in a book written for teen girls back in the 1940's - and that may mean that the writer was using a word from the 30's.

On the other hand, maybe some teen somewhere was using the word back in the 70's.

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@ossobuco,

LGSWE: "... will all find it (the LGSWE) useful to know which grammatical patterns are common and which are rare. Hitherto this information has been based on native-speaker intuition. However, native speakers rarely have accurate perceptions of these differences: ... "

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Does 'dreamboat' always refer to a male?

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