Definition of "moonbeam"
moonbeam
noun
plural moonbeams
Quotations
Be kinde and curteous to this gentleman, / Hop in his walkes, and gambole in his eyes, / Feede him with Apricocks, and Dewberries, / With purple Grapes, greene figges, and Mulberries, / The hony bagges ſteale from the humble Bees, / And for night tapers, croppe their waxen thighes, / And light them with at the fiery Glowe-wormes eyes, / To haue my loue to bedde, and to ariſe, / And pluck the wings, from painted Butterflies, / To fanne the Moone-beames from his ſleeping eyes, / Nod to him Elues, and doe him curteſies.
c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, A Midsommer Nights Dreame. […] (First Quarto), London: […] [Richard Bradock] for Thomas Fisher, […], published 1600, [Act III, scene i]
Someone who tends to be dreamy and prone to unrealistic romanticism.
Quotations
You really are a moonbeam. The way I remember it, most of the shouting and protesting was coming from young guys who had college deferments and were worried what would happen when they got out of school and the deferment ran out and they couldn't get a job teaching in a ghetto school so they could get another deferment.
2014, Mike Royko, Mike Royko: The Chicago Tribune Collection 1984-1997
A goal or aspiration that appears attractive but is ultimately insubstantial.
Quotations
Therefore it has always seemed clear to me, and that has been the decision of the Senate for many years before when we have had these questions stoutly contested, that where the direction (which is legislation, of course, just as the appropriation is) is confined to the appropriation, to the expenditure of the money appropriated, which can not be paid out of the Treasury without the consent of Congress, Congress may say that it shall be paid for moonbeams, if it pleases, although the Constitution of the United States itself might say that no money should be paid for buying moonbeams.
1882, United States. Congress, Congressional Record, page 3490
It did not take long to realize that the dozens of missions we were running all over southern Iraq were really nothing more than an occasionally dangerous hunt for moonbeams, and that the British mission as a whole was losing its way.
2017, Frank Ledwidge, Losing Small Wars: British Military Failure in the 9/11 Wars, page 2