intelfam: Whether to use 'golden dream' or 'gold dream' depends on the context but, as it stands, "a gold dream" would mean a dream about gold. "Golden" is an adjective, a description of colour. So it can be used as a metaphor for anything shiny or valuable. In that sense it would mean an ambition, a fantasy, anything wonderful, valuable, desired etc. So I would suggest golden would be the right word. English uses colours a lot in metaphorical ways. "A rosy future" and so on.
Jyrkkä Jätkä :I've seen and heard of golden dreams (there's a movie, a song and a cocktail of that name) but never heard of gold dreams.
Golden dreams could be interpreted as sweet day dreams, dreams of better life, while gold dreams could be expressed better as dreams of gold.
Gold dream means dream about gold, while Golden dream means dream about something very valuable or precious. Like becoming CEO of my company is my golden dream. :)
thar:Gold is the noun used as an adjective, golden is the adjective.In this case the adjective has all sorts of connotations (colour, happiness, aspiration, money etc), and since the word exists as an adjective, the only reason not to use it, and to use the adjectival noun instead, is when you are talking specifically about the substance gold.
eg another metal, lead
a lead dream is a dream about lead (the metal, trading in in, whatever)
a leaden dream is a dream about being weighed down, heavy, slow, depressed.
When there are two possible words, the meanings tend to diverge to take maximum advantage.