Imaginative

How to spell imaginative

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce imaginative

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does imaginative mean?

1. adjectiveShowing or marked by new, inventive, and original ideas.

Imaginative in a sentence

• Her imaginative approach to the budget saved the department thousands.

• The architect produced an imaginative design for the cramped city plot.

Where does imaginative come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb imaginari, meaning 'to form a mental picture' or 'to imagine', which itself was built on imago, the Latin word for an image, likeness, or copy. From the same imago root English also gained 'image' and 'imagine', and that shared family is worth remembering because the tricky middle is spelled exactly like 'imagine' before the ending changes. The adjective reached English through Old French in the late medieval period, with the form 'imaginatif' describing something connected to the mind's picturing power. By the fifteenth century it was settling into its modern sense of being inventive and creative, full of new and original ideas. The spelling keeps the soft 'g' of 'imagine', so the trap is the unstressed vowels: writers must hold on to the 'a' in imag-IN-ative and the second 'i' rather than letting the schwa sounds blur them away.

How the word is built

• imagin- (from Latin imaginari: to form a mental picture)
• -ative (adjective suffix meaning tending to)