Imaginary Meaning
/ɪˈmæd͡ʒɪnəɹi/Definition, CEFR level B1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
adjExisting only in the imagination.
adjHaving no real part; that part of a complex number which is a multiple of √ (called imaginary unit).
Sentence Examples
You say Nessie is an imaginary being, but I think she exists.
I don't believe that Santa Claus is imaginary.
The equator is an imaginary line around the middle of the earth.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The child's friend was ____, existing only in her playful mind.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
As a young child, he had a very active mind and often played with several ____ friends.
Word Origin & History
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.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"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:
Explore More B1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The child's friend was ____, existing only in her playful mind.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
As a young child, he had a very active mind and often played with several ____ friends.