Adjacent Words

Imaginary definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

IMAG'INARY, a. Existing only in imagination or fancy; visionary; fancied; not real.
Imaginary ills and fancied tortures.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: not based on fact; unreal; "the falsehood about some fanciful secret treaties"- F.D.Roosevelt; "a small child's imaginary friends"; "to create a notional world for oneself" [syn: fanciful, imaginary, notional] n
1: (mathematics) a number of the form a+bi where a and b are real numbers and i is the square root of -1 [syn: complex number, complex quantity, imaginary number, imaginary]

Merriam Webster's

adjective Date: 14th century 1. a. existing only in imagination ; lacking factual reality b. formed or characterized imaginatively or arbitrarily <his canvases, chiefly imaginary, somber landscapes — Current Biography> 2. containing or relating to the imaginary unit <imaginary roots> • imaginarily adverb • imaginariness noun Synonyms: imaginary, fanciful, visionary, fantastic, chimerical, quixotic mean unreal or unbelievable. imaginary applies to something which is fictitious and purely the product of one's imagination <an imaginary desert isle>. fanciful suggests the free play of the imagination <a teller of fanciful stories>. visionary stresses impracticality or incapability of realization <visionary schemes>. fantastic implies incredibility or strangeness beyond belief <a fantastic world inhabited by monsters>. chimerical combines the implication of visionary and fantastic <chimerical dreams of future progress>. quixotic implies a devotion to romantic or chivalrous ideals unrestrained by ordinary prudence and common sense <a quixotic crusade>.

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. 1 existing only in the imagination. 2 Math. being the square root of a negative quantity, and plotted graphically in a direction usu. perpendicular to the axis of real quantities (see REAL(1)). Derivatives: imaginarily adv. Etymology: ME f. L imaginarius (as IMAGE)

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Imaginary Im*ag"i*na*ry, a. [L. imaginarius: cf. F. imaginaire.] Existing only in imagination or fancy; not real; fancied; visionary; ideal. Wilt thou add to all the griefs I suffer Imaginary ills and fancied tortures? --Addison. Imaginary calculus See under Calculus. Imaginary expression or quantity (Alg.), an algebraic expression which involves the impossible operation of taking the square root of a negative quantity; as, [root]-9, a + b [root]-1. Imaginary points, lines, surfaces, etc. (Geom.), points, lines, surfaces, etc., imagined to exist, although by reason of certain changes of a figure they have in fact ceased to have a real existence. Syn: Ideal; fanciful; chimerical; visionary; fancied; unreal; illusive.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Imaginary Im*ag"i*na*ry, n. (Alg.) An imaginary expression or quantity.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

An imaginary person, place, or thing exists only in your mind or in a story, and not in real life. Lots of children have imaginary friends. ADJ: usu ADJ n

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

a. 1. Visionary, ideal, fancied, fanciful, chimerical, dreamy, unreal, illusory, illusive, shadowy, wild, Quixotic, Utopian. 2. Hypothetical, supposed, assumed.

Moby Thesaurus

Barmecidal, Barmecide, abstract, air-built, airy, algorismic, algorithmic, aliquot, apparent, apparitional, autistic, cardinal, chimeric, chimerical, cloud-built, deceptive, decimal, delusional, delusionary, delusive, delusory, dereistic, differential, digital, dreamlike, dreamy, erroneous, ethereal, even, exponential, fallacious, false, fancied, fanciful, fantastic, fatuitous, fatuous, fictional, fictitious, fictive, figmental, figural, figurate, figurative, finite, fractional, gaseous, gossamery, hallucinatory, hypothetical, ideal, illusional, illusionary, illusive, illusory, imaginational, imaginative, imagined, immaterial, impair, impossible, infinite, integral, irrational, legendary, logarithmic, logometric, made-up, merely nominal, misleading, mythic, mythical, mythological, negative, nonexistent, not real, notional, numeral, numerary, numerative, numeric, odd, ordinal, ostensible, pair, phantasmagoric, phantasmal, phantasmic, phantom, phantomlike, positive, possible, prime, quixotic, radical, rarefied, rational, real, reciprocal, seeming, self-deceptive, self-deluding, shadowy, specious, spectral, spirituous, submultiple, subtile, subtle, supposititious, surd, tenuous, transcendental, unactual, unfounded, unreal, unrealistic, unsubstantial, untrue, vaporous, visional, visionary, windy