Imagine

How to spell imagine

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce imagine

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does imagine mean?

1. verbTo form a picture or idea of something in the mind, or to suppose that something is the case.

Imagine in a sentence

• Try to imagine the kitchen with the new units fitted along this wall.

• I can imagine how stressful the move must have been for the whole family.

Where does imagine come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This verb comes from the Latin imaginari, meaning 'to picture to oneself' or 'to form a mental image', which was built directly on imago, the noun for an image, likeness, or copy. The same imago root sits inside the modern words 'image' and 'imagination', and noticing that shared root is the surest way to remember the silent 'g' and the single 'm' in imagine. English took the word in the 1300s by way of Old French imaginer, and it kept the sense of forming pictures in the mind. Over time it widened from purely visual imagining to mean supposing, guessing, or assuming something to be the case. The spelling trap is the unstressed middle: writers hear 'ih-MAJ-in' and can hesitate over the 'g' that softens before the 'i', or wrongly double the 'm'.

How the word is built

• imagin- (from Latin imago: image, likeness)
• -e (verb ending, via French)