imaginary
Etymology

From Middle English ymaginarie, ymagynary, from Latin imāginārius, from imāgō, equivalent to .

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.

Pronunciation
  • (RP) IPA: /ɪˈmæd͡ʒɪnəɹi/, /ɪˈmæd͡ʒɪnɹi/
  • (America) IPA: /ɪˈmæd͡ʒɪˌnɛɹi/
Adjective

imaginary

  1. Existing only in the imagination.
    Unicorns are imaginary.
    • 1712 (date written), [Joseph] Addison, Cato, a Tragedy. […], London: […] J[acob] Tonson, […], published 1713, →OCLC ↗, Act I, scene iv, page 1 ↗:
      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 \sqrt{-1} (called imaginary unit).
Synonyms
  • (existing only in the imagination) all in one's head
Translations Translations Noun

imaginary (plural imaginaries)

  1. Imagination; fancy. [from 16th c.]
    • 2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 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 number. [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. [from c. 1975]



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