Adjacent Words

Unreal definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

UNRE'AL, a. not real; not substantial; having appearance only.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: lacking in reality or substance or genuineness; not corresponding to acknowledged facts or criteria; "ghosts and other unreal entities"; "unreal propaganda serving as news" [ant: existent, real]
2: not actually such; being or seeming fanciful or imaginary; "this conversation is getting more and more unreal"; "the fantastically unreal world of government bureaucracy"; "the unreal world of advertising art" [ant: real]
3: contrived by art rather than nature; "artificial flowers"; "artificial flavoring"; "an artificial diamond"; "artificial fibers"; "artificial sweeteners" [syn: artificial, unreal] [ant: natural]
4: lacking material form or substance; unreal; "as insubstantial as a dream"; "an insubstantial mirage on the horizon" [syn: insubstantial, unsubstantial, unreal] [ant: material, real, substantial]

Merriam Webster's

adjective Date: 1605 lacking in reality, substance, or genuineness ; artificial, illusory; also incredible, fantastic

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. 1 not real. 2 imaginary, illusory. 3 US & Austral. sl. incredible, amazing. Derivatives: unreality n. unreally adv.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Unreal Un*re"al, a. Not real; unsubstantial; fanciful; ideal.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

1. If you say that a situation is unreal, you mean that it is so strange that you find it difficult to believe it is happening. It was unreal. Like some crazy childhood nightmare... It felt so unreal to be talking about our son like this. = bizarre ADJ: v-link ADJ • unreality To his surprise he didn't feel too weak. Light-headed certainly, and with a sense of unreality, but able to walk. 2. If you use unreal to describe something, you are critical of it because you think that it is not like, or not related to, things you expect to find in the real world. ...unreal financial targets... Almost all fictional detectives are unreal. = unrealistic ADJ [disapproval]

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

a. Insubstantial, unsubstantial, imaginary, shadowy, visionary, spectral, ghostly.

Moby Thesaurus

Barmecidal, Barmecide, affected, air-built, airy, apocryphal, apparent, apparitional, artificial, assumed, autistic, bastard, bogus, brummagem, chimeric, chimerical, cloud-built, colorable, colored, counterfeit, counterfeited, deceptive, delusional, delusionary, delusive, delusory, dereistic, distorted, dreamlike, dreamy, dressed up, dummy, embellished, embroidered, erroneous, ersatz, ethereal, factitious, fake, faked, fallacious, false, falsified, fancied, fanciful, fantastic, fatuitous, fatuous, feigned, fictional, fictitious, fictive, figmental, fraudulent, garbled, gaseous, gossamery, hypothetical, illegitimate, illusional, illusionary, illusive, illusory, imaginary, imaginational, imagined, imitation, immaterial, junky, made-up, make-believe, man-made, merely nominal, misleading, mock, mythical, nonexistent, not real, notional, ostensible, perverted, phantasmagoric, phantasmal, phantom, phantomlike, phony, pinchbeck, pretended, pseudo, put-on, quasi, queer, rarefied, seeming, self-deceptive, self-deluding, self-styled, shadowy, sham, shoddy, simulated, so-called, soi-disant, specious, spectral, spirituous, spurious, subtile, subtle, supposititious, synthesized, synthetic, tenuous, theoretical, tin, tinsel, titivated, twisted, unactual, unauthentic, unfounded, ungenuine, unnatural, unrealistic, unsubstantial, vaporous, visional, visionary, warped, windy