Adjective: imaginary
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
Perifrastic
| Comparative | more imaginary |
| Superlative | most imaginary |
Sample Sentences
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imaginary friend
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Unicorns are imaginary.
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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:]
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Fiction refers to imaginary stories. [2003, Tom Conklin, Comprehension Cliffhanger Stories (page 31)]
Adjectives inflected like imaginary
priest-ridden,
unreposed,
evadible,
dissentious,
dissentient,
unforesighted,
egocentrical,
unephemeral,
unennobling,
mensuralist,
flocculent,
unseductive,
whoopsy,
whooshy,
surrogate,
Nicodian,
unrepaired,
prismatoidal,
renorenal,
unseducible, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
1. From Middle English ymaginarie, ymagynary, from Latin imāginārius (“relating to images, fancied”), from imāgō, equivalent to imagine + -ary.
2. 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. See: Latin Adjectives '
imāginārius'.
Verbs referencing "imaginary"
Finnish Adjectives
imaginaarinen.