imaginary
Etymology
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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 Adjectiveimaginary
- Existing only in the imagination.
- Unicorns are imaginary.
- (mathematics, of a number) Having no real part; that part of a complex number which is a multiple of \sqrt{-1} (called imaginary unit).
- (existing only in the imagination) all in one's head
- French: imaginaire
- German: eingebildet, imaginär
- Italian: immaginario
- Portuguese: imaginário
- Russian: вообража́емый
- Spanish: imaginario
- German: imaginär
- Portuguese: imaginário
- Russian: мни́мый
- Spanish: imaginario
imaginary (plural imaginaries)
- 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.
- (mathematics) An imaginary number. [from 18th c.]
- (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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