imaginary

[ih-maj-uh-ner-ee]

adjective

1. existing only in the imagination or fancy; not real; fancied.

   an imaginary illness; the imaginary animals in the stories of Dr. Seuss.

   Synonyms: illusory, baseless, chimerical, shadowy, visionary, fanciful
   Antonyms: real

noun

plural

imaginaries 

1. Mathematics.,  imaginary number.

imaginary

/ -dʒɪnrɪ, ɪˈmædʒɪnərɪ /

adjective

1. existing in the imagination; unreal; illusory

2. maths involving or containing imaginary numbers. The imaginary part of a complex number, z, is usually written Im z

Other Word Forms

• imaginarily adverb
• imaginariness noun
• nonimaginarily adverb
• nonimaginarilyness noun
• nonimaginariness noun
• nonimaginary adjective
• preimaginary adjective
• unimaginary adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of imaginary¹

1350–1400; Middle English < Latin imāginārius, equivalent to imāgin-, (stem of imāgō ) image + -ārius -ary

Example Sentences

Above my desk, I made an imaginary city out of magazine cut-outs in which the right half of George Clooney’s face formed a jagged skyscraper.

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It’s delivering a World Series to a gambling cartel while a retinue of sports reporters cover a completely different — and wholly imaginary — ballgame.

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They order troops to watch two imaginary lines around their positions.

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And unlike with her insults, Bondi rarely has to check her notes before slobbering over the imaginary perfection of men who can boost her career.

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He’s double-cast Luna and Tonatiuh as the film-within-a-film’s leads and changed the imaginary tale from a Nazi propaganda flick to a melodramatic but moving South American romance between a glamour queen and a noble photographer.

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Related Words

• abstract 
• fanciful 
• fantastic 
• fictional 
• hypothetical 
• imagined www.thesaurus.com
• theoretical 
• unreal 
• whimsical