Imaginary

How to spell imaginary

9 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce imaginary

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does imaginary mean?

1. adjectiveExisting only in the mind or imagination, not in reality.

Imaginary in a sentence

• The lonely child invented an imaginary friend to keep her company.

• His fear of the empty house was based on imaginary dangers rather than real ones.

Where does imaginary come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin imaginarius, meaning 'existing only in fancy or appearance', which was built on imago, the Latin noun for a likeness, picture, or copy. From imago came the verb imaginari, literally 'to form a picture in the mind', and that sense of conjuring an inner image is exactly what survives in modern English. The word arrived through Old French in the late 1300s, settling into English as an adjective describing things that exist in the mind rather than in the world. The same imago root sits inside the everyday words 'image' and 'imagine', and noticing that shared 'imagin-' stem is the surest way to remember the spelling. The ending caused most of the trouble: it is -ary, the suffix meaning 'relating to', not the -ery that writers sometimes reach for by mistake.

How the word is built

• imagin- (from Latin imaginari, to picture to oneself, from imago, image)
• -ary (adjective suffix meaning 'relating to')