imaginary
/ɪˈmæd͡ʒɪˌn(ɛ)ɹi/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.79 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
5
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Existing only in the imagination.
adj
Relating or belonging to the imagination.
adj
Having no real part; that part of a complex number which is a multiple of √ (called imaginary unit).
noun
noun
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.
Example Sentences
- "imaginary friend"
- "Unicorns are imaginary."
- "Wilt thou add to all the griefs I suffer / Imaginary ills and fancied tortures?"
- "Fiction refers to imaginary stories."
- "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."
- "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 […]."
Etymology
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.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ɪˈmæd͡ʒɪˌn(ɛ)ɹi/
- British English: /ɪˈmæd͡ʒɪnəɹi/