Word.ws English Dictionary

reality checks

reality checks is the plural of reality check.

Meaning of reality check

Noun

reality check (plural reality checks)

  1. A check or review to make sure something is consistent, reasonable, etc.
    • Near-synonyms: sanity check, sanity test; sniff test
    1. (lucid dreaming) a test done to establish if one is dreaming
      • I had this dream last night where I was at my grandparents’ house when a large plastic hippo started sliding backwards up the driveway. I did a reality check, as one does in this situation, and it worked. I knew I was streaming.[…]2022 November 5, NyFlow_, “Reality checks work during dreams, but it’s like I’m not really lucid and can’t ground myself for some reason. I just go back to normal dreaming. Help?”, in Reddit...
  2. (idiomatic) A wake-up call; a reminder.
    • Over the last six years, I've been doing a tremendous amount of public speaking and I hope that my coming out about being HIV positive is a reality check for other young people, that hearing a peer speak from personal experience has an impact on them.1999, Katherine Martin, Women of Courage, Inspiring Stories from the Women Who Lived Them, page 24

Questions about reality checks

What is reality checks the plural of?
Reality checks is the plural of reality check.

Words near reality checks in the dictionary

  1. reality
  2. reality bender
  3. reality benders
  4. reality challenged
  5. reality check
  6. reality checks
  7. reality distortion field
  8. reality distortion fields
  9. reality gap
  10. reality mining
  11. reality pornography

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: reality checks (page history and authors); reality check (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “reality checks.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/reality_checks. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.