• (RP) IPA: /ɪˈmædʒɪn(ə)ɹi/
• (GA) IPA: /ɪˈmædʒɪˌnɛɹi/

imaginary

1. Existing only in the imagination.

   Santa Claus is imaginary.

   • 1713, Joseph Addison, Cato, published 1712, [Act 4, scene 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 the square root of -1.

• (existing only in the imagination) all in one's head

• French: imaginaire
• German: eingebildet
• Italian: immaginario
• Portuguese: imaginário
• Russian: вообража́емый
• Spanish: imaginario

• German: imaginär
• Portuguese: imaginário
• Russian: мни́мая
• Spanish: imaginario

imaginary (plural imaginaries)

1. Imagination; fancy. [from 16th c.]
   • 2002, Colin Jones (historian), 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.