imaginary
adjectivenouncommon in dialogue
- United Kingdom//ɪˈmæd͡ʒɪnəɹi//
- United Kingdom//ɪˈmæd͡ʒɪnɹi//
- United States//ɪˈmæd͡ʒɪˌn(ɛ)ɹi//
Existing only in the imagination.
adjective
- 1
Existing only in the imagination.
imaginary friend
Unicorns are imaginary.
Wilt thou add to all the griefs I suffer / Imaginary ills and fancied tortures?
- 2
Relating or belonging to the imagination.
Fiction refers to imaginary stories.
- 3
Having no real part; that part of a complex number which is a multiple of √ (called imaginary unit).
Etymology
From Middle English ymaginarie, ymagynary, from Latin imāginārius (“relating to images, fancied”), from imāgō, equivalent to imagine + -ary. The mathematical sense derives from René Descartes's use (of the French imaginaire) in 1637, La Geometrie, to ridicule the notion of regarding non-real roots of polynomials as numbers. Although Descartes' usage was derogatory, the designation stuck even after the concept gained acceptance in the 18th century.
noun
- 1
Imagination; fancy.
By then too Mozart's opera, from Da Ponte's libretto, had made Figaro a stock character in the European imaginary and set the whole Continent whistling Mozartian airs and chuckling at Figaresque humour.
- 2
An imaginary number.
- 3
The set of values, institutions, laws, and symbols common to a particular social group and the corresponding society through which people imagine their social whole.
The sensory media are sensuous materials which prolong our bodily life into the surrounding world, and hence the media are imaginaries. These perceptually penetrated materials are " imaginaries " because they operate here in our living body […].
For example, colonial motifs of many kinds became increasingly central to the British national imaginary from the mid-nineteenth century, while the imaginative significance of 'the soldier' has long been derived from, and helped to sustain, the linkage between national and military imaginaries.
Forms
- plural
- imaginaries
- comparative
- more imaginary
- superlative
- most imaginary