imaginaryadj/ɪˈmæd͡ʒɪnəɹi/

• 1

  Existing only in the imagination.

  • imaginary friend
  • Unicorns are imaginary.
• 2

  Relating or belonging to the imagination.

  • Fiction refers to imaginary stories.
• 3

  mathematicssciencesHaving no real part; that part of a complex number which is a multiple of √ (called imaginary unit).

imaginarynoun/ɪˈmæd͡ʒɪnəɹi/

• 1

  Imagination; fancy.

  • 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.
• 2

  mathematicssciencesAn imaginary number.

• 3

  human-sciencessciencessocial-scienceThe set of values, institutions, laws, and symbols common to a particular social group and the corresponding society through which people imagine their social whole.

  • The sensory media are sensuous materials which prolong our bodily life into the surrounding world, and hence the media are imaginaries. These perceptually penetrated materials are " imaginaries " because they operate here in our living body […].
  • For example, colonial motifs of many kinds became increasingly central to the British national imaginary from the mid-nineteenth century, while the imaginative significance of 'the soldier' has long been derived from, and helped to sustain, the linkage between national and military imaginaries.