imaginary

CEFRB1

/ɪˈmæd͡ʒɪnəɹi/

adjective · noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

01
adjective
Existing only in the mind, not reality.
02
adjective
Extra detail
Having no real part; that part of a complex number which is a multiple of √ (called imaginary unit).

Examples

I don't believe that Santa Claus is imaginary.
The equator is an imaginary line around the middle of the earth.

At a glance

Sits at B1 on the CEFR scale

Senses: 5
Parts of speech: 2
Citations: 5
Synonyms: 1

Deep Dive

adjective

Extra meanings

Imagination; fancy.
Existing only in the imagination.

noun

Extra meaning

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.

More examples

In context

You say Nessie is an imaginary being, but I think she exists.
Unicorns are imaginary.
imaginary friend

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The child's friend was blank, existing only in her playful mind.

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Nearby

Citations

The word in print, with each source given in full.

Wilt thou add to all the griefs I suffer / Imaginary ills and fancied tortures?
1712 (date written), [Joseph] Addison, Cato, a Tragedy. […], London: […] J[acob] Tonson, […], published 1713, →OCLC, Act IV, scene i, page 45
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.
2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 324
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 […].
1978, John Derrickson McCurdy, Visionary Appropriation, page 145
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.
1994, Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire, and the Imagining ..., page 51
While Oil, its extraction, and the global petroculture and its role in transforming the planet's climate undoubtedly play a crucial role in the Antropocene imaginary — to the extent that petrofiction has been construed not just as a genre but as a periodizing gesture of "petromodernity" — it would hamper both the imagination and the root of petrofiction to restrict the range of this term to the encounter with fossil fuels within a carbon imaginary.
2015, Adrian Daub, Elisabeth Krimmer, Goethe Yearbook 22, page 96

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Origin

adjective

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.

Deep Dive

adjective

noun

More examples

Related

Quick test

The child's friend was blank—, existing only in her playful mind.

Nearby

Origin

adjective

The child's friend was blank, existing only in her playful mind.