Unreal

How to spell unreal

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce unreal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does unreal mean?

1. adjectiveNot actually existing; imaginary or seeming false.
2. adjectiveSo impressive or remarkable that it is hard to believe.

Unreal in a sentence

• The whole holiday felt unreal, as though she were watching someone else's life.

• The view from the summit was absolutely unreal after the long climb.

• The film blends ordinary streets with unreal landscapes that exist only in computers.

• The band's final song was unreal, and the crowd would not stop cheering.

Where does unreal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built from the very old Germanic prefix un-, meaning simply 'not', attached to the adjective 'real'. 'Real' itself came into English in the late medieval period from the Latin word realis, meaning 'actual' or 'relating to a thing', which was formed on res, the Latin noun for a 'thing' or 'matter'. The same res root survives in everyday words like 'republic' (literally the 'public thing') and in the legal phrase 'real estate', where 'real' once meant property that is a fixed, actual thing. 'Unreal' was formed within English by simply prefixing un- to 'real', a combining habit so productive that English has thousands of such un- words. It first meant 'not actually existing' or 'imaginary', and only in modern colloquial use did it pick up the admiring sense of something so striking it seems hard to believe. Because both halves are spelled exactly as they sound and the un- prefix never doubles its letters here, the spelling is genuinely simple.

How the word is built

• un- (not)
• real (from Latin realis: actual, relating to a thing)