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Is there any phrase or just a word for a person (a friend or someone else) who has the same dream (goal, purpose) as someone else? How can I define it in English?

For instance:

We both want to travel around the world by car.

Is the only way to call this person"the friend who has the same dream"?

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    By dream, do you mean goal in life? Like, you may both dream to be lawyers?
    – user10893
    Commented Oct 11, 2011 at 1:27
  • @simchona - you right. I meant goal, purpose in life.
    – kuzey beytar
    Commented Oct 11, 2011 at 1:31
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    If the best "goal in life" that two guys can come up with is to travel around the world by car (by implication, separately), perhaps they have the psychiatric syndrome Folie à deux, otherwise known as shared psychosis.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Oct 11, 2011 at 2:11
  • @FumbleFingers - Interesting approach :) But how do you think, it is a psychiatric syndrome? Your comment is about only for my example, or general approach to having dream?
    – kuzey beytar
    Commented Oct 11, 2011 at 2:19
  • @dino: Well, I can understand a couple of guys wanting to go and do something like your example together, for a finite amount of time. But it does seem like a rather odd "life's ambition", which is what I assume you mean by dream, goal, purpose. Maybe if the ambition was walk on the moon I'd find it easier to understand two people just happening to have that same aspiration, without any special implication of wanting to do it together.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Oct 11, 2011 at 2:47

6 Answers 6

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The word that will make this sound natural is "shared." For example, try any of the following:

"Ever since we were kids, we shared the dream of becoming lawyers."

"We shared the same dream of becoming a lawyer someday."

"Becoming a lawyer was always a dream we shared."

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    At first I thought a "shared dream" always implied jointly and overtly sharing the dream together in the past as well as the present. Then I realised that you can share the same dream as someone else even if you never meet them (which could apply in your examples 2/3).
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Oct 11, 2011 at 3:00
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I think the prefix co- and the modifier fellow do better than shared to convey the idea of having identical aims without necessarily trying to achieve them together. (Though I'm not denying that shared can be used in that way.)

For travel or other recreational goals, a phrase like fellow enthusiast might do.

For more ambitious aims, perhaps something along the lines of co-aspirant would help. The latter isn't a standard phrase, but I think its meaning is perfectly clear.

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  • "fellow dreamer" as someone with the same dream.
    – djeidot
    Commented Oct 11, 2011 at 8:42
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    I thought about dreamer, too, of course, but the word tends to imply idealistic fantasies rather than life ambitions.
    – user13141
    Commented Oct 11, 2011 at 8:48
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'Comrade' might be closest to what you are looking for; people can use it to refer to someone in their same organization or group.

Of course, this just means you have an opportunity to get creative. I'm sure with a little thought, you could come up with something really evocative.

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    The use of comrade has plummeted over the last century, probably because of its connotations with authoritarian left-wing regimes.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Oct 11, 2011 at 2:05
  • @FumbleFingers I think the story is more complex than that. The decrease in 'comrade' is associated with an increase in 'Comrade', which leads me to believe that it took on proper noun status. Additionally, 'Comrade' decreases in usage after 2000, and 'comrade' surges back.
    – Nathan
    Commented Oct 11, 2011 at 2:42
  • I don't see how that makes it more complex. I'm sure an even higher proportion of the capitalised instances relate to authoritarian left-wing regimes. Comrade Stalin, and Comrade Ogilvy (in Orwell's 1984) come to mind. My basic point is that the word is definitely "tainted" these days, although there are obviously some "positive" set phrases, such as comrade in arms
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Oct 11, 2011 at 3:09
  • @FumbleFingers It's not as simple as "usage of comrade has plummeted", as the graph plainly indicates that usage of big C "Comrade" increased at the same time that little c "comrade" decreased. And I agree that the increase in "Comrade" is probably do to phrases like "Comrade Stalin", that's kinda the point. Additionally, you left out 8 years from the graph, which shows that little usage of little c "comrade" is increasing in recent years. What this means, I'm not sure. I agree that the word might be tainted by its associations with Soviet Russia, but you can't just read that off the graph.
    – Nathan
    Commented Oct 11, 2011 at 4:02
  • My starting point was my own "gut feel" that comrade was dated/tainted (capitalised or not). NGram seemed to me to confirm that, but to be honest I wouldn't set too much store by any such charts unless the patterns were overwhelming. Or if they agreed with my own preconceptions, obviously! :)
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Oct 15, 2011 at 17:42
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The phrase "kindred spirits" also might be appropriate here. It means two people who are very similar in some way, for example, having similar goals, or having similar personalities.

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You can say you share similar or common goals, or you have shared goals.

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In this particular example, the phrase "fellow traveler" fits both in its literal meaning as well as its implied parlance. It means to want the same thing, even if you have different ways of going about it.

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