Oar
An oar — the means of pulling your own way forward — often touches disappointment through sacrificing your pleasure for others' comfort, or vain effort if it's lost or broken. The dream may ask where you're rowing hard for someone else's benefit, and whether you still hold the means to steer your own course or have let it slip away.
A live archive of what the world is dreaming tonight: which symbols are rising, the collective mood, and where the dreams are coming from. Free, always.
See what’s rising tonight →What the old dream-books say
These are the entries the historical dream-books record for oar, in their own words. They are period voices, not predictions, and they do not always agree with one another.
Gustavus Hindman Miller, 1901
To dream of handling oars, portends disappointments for you, inasmuch as you will sacrifice your own pleasure for the comfort of others.
To lose an oar, denotes vain efforts to carry out designs satisfactorily.
A broken oar represents interruption in some anticipated pleasure.
Fontaine, 1862
If you dream of sailing in a boat, and losing one or more of the oars, it is a sign of the death of your father, mother, or guardian, or of some one to whom you look for protection: if an engaged young girl or a married woman dreams this, it foretells the death of a lover or husband.