imaginary

Anything imaginary is not real: it only exists in someone's head. We hate to ruin your day, but unicorns are imaginary.

Our imagination allows us to think of anything we want, and things that only exist in our minds are imaginary. Many children have imaginary friends: people they talk to who aren't real. Mythological beings like dragons, Zeus, and Thor are imaginary. A fantasy about marrying a movie star is probably imaginary, because that isn't likely to happen.

Definitions of imaginary
  1. adjective
    not based on fact; unreal
    “a small child's imaginary friends”
    synonyms: fanciful, notional
    unreal
    lacking in reality or substance or genuineness; not corresponding to acknowledged facts or criteria
  2. noun
    (mathematics) a number of the form a+bi where a and b are real numbers and i is the square root of -1
    synonyms: complex number, complex quantity, imaginary number
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    types:
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    complex conjugate
    either of two complex numbers whose real parts are identical and whose imaginary parts differ only in sign
    real, real number
    any rational or irrational number
    pure imaginary number
    an imaginary number of the form a+bi where a is 0
    dot product, inner product, scalar product
    a real number (a scalar) that is the product of two vectors
    imaginary part, imaginary part of a complex number
    the part of a complex number that has the square root of -1 as a factor
    rational, rational number
    an integer or a fraction
    irrational, irrational number
    a real number that cannot be expressed as a rational number
    type of:
    number
    a concept of quantity involving zero and units
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