imagination
Pluralimaginations
- 1The image-making power of the mind; the ability to mentally create or reproduce images of things not previously perceived.
Her imagination supplied every detail of the city she had never visited.
Architects depend on imagination to see a finished building long before construction begins.
Note
Here the word names the faculty itself. It came through Middle English ymaginacioun and Old French from Latin imāginātiō, and it is built as imagine + -ation. Philosophers and psychologists set it apart from sense perception on one side and from the images it produces on the other. It is something that can be stirred, as when a deft gesture 'aroused his imagination' in Robert Barr's Lord Stranleigh Abroad (1913).
- 2Creativity or resourcefulness; the capacity to devise original ideas or inventive solutions.
The low-budget film makes up in imagination what it lacks in special effects.
Fixing the supply shortage took considerable imagination from the logistics team.
Similarcreativity, inventiveness, ingenuity, originality, resourcefulness
- 3A mental image or conception produced by imagining; something pictured in the mind rather than actually perceived.
The futuristic skyline in the painting is pure imagination; no such city exists anywhere.
His account of the voyage mixed genuine memory with imagination, and he could no longer tell which was which.
Similarnotion, conception, imagining
Note
One product of the mind rather than the power behind it, so this is the use that takes a plural freely. Francis Bacon writes in The Essayes (1625) that in young men 'imaginations stream into their minds.' Conception, notion and imagining are close neighbors. When you mean a single thing pictured, an imagination or imaginations makes the count clear. Imagination without an article usually points back to the faculty.
- 4In particular, the construction of false or unreal images in the mind; fantasizing about things with no basis in fact.
The footsteps she kept hearing turned out to be imagination; the recording picked up nothing at all.
His belief that the neighbors were spying on him was imagination, fed by stress and too little sleep.
Similarfantasy, fancy, delusion, illusion, invention
Note
The dismissive sense lives in one everyday formula: 'That's just your imagination.' It is said to wave away a fear or suspicion, usually with a possessive and with just or only in front. That is how to tell it from the mental faculty. The faculty is neutral or admired, while this use quietly says the thing imagined is not there.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of imagination apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
From Middle English ymaginacioun, from Old French imaginacion, from Latin imāginātiō. It is equivalent to imagine plus the suffix -ation.