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whistle Dixie

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whistle Dixie

Engage in unrealistic, hopeful fantasizing, as in If you think you can drive there in two hours, you're whistling Dixie. This idiom alludes to the song "Dixie" and the vain hope that the Confederacy, known as Dixie, would win the Civil War.

See also: Dixie, whistle

whistle Dixie

Slang

To engage in unrealistically rosy fantasizing: "If you think mass transportation is going to replace the automobile I think you're whistling Dixie" (Henry Ford II).

See also: Dixie, whistle