imaginary

Etymology

From Middle French imaginaire, from Latin imāginārius (“relating to images, fancied”), from imāgō.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ɪˈmædʒɪn(ə)ɹi/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ɪˈmædʒɪˌnɛɹi/

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Adjective

imaginary (comparative more imaginary, superlative most imaginary)

1. Existing only in the imagination.

   Santa Claus is imaginary.

   • Addison

     Wilt thou add to all the griefs I suffer / Imaginary ills and fancied tortures?

2. (mathematics, of a number) Having no real part; that part of a complex number which is a multiple of the square root of -1.

Noun

imaginary (plural imaginaries)

1. Imagination; fancy. [from 16th c.]
   • 2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin 2003, p. 324:

     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.

2. (mathematics) An imaginary quantity. [from 18th c.]
3. (sociology) 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.