imagining

Pluralimaginings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of imagine.

   He spent the whole drive imagining how the interview might go.

   Imagining alternative outcomes is a natural part of planning ahead.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every meaning of imagine, and context decides which one applies. In you're just imagining it, the progressive leans toward believing in something false. In imagining a new kitchen, it is plain picturing. Older writing can use it for plotting or devising, a sense now obsolete, so someone imagining mischief in an old text may be scheming it rather than daydreaming about it.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   Something that exists only in the mind; a figment of the imagination.

   He dismissed the figure in the hallway as a mere imagining brought on by exhaustion.

   Childhood imaginings often shape the stories we tell as adults.

   Similarfantasy, figment, fancy, illusion, hallucination

   Oppositereality

   Note

   The noun usually travels in the plural and with a possessive: my imaginings, their own imaginings. The plural suggests many passing pictures rather than one settled idea, and the possessive marks them as private. That sets it apart from the verb's gerund, as in imagining the outcome, which names the activity and takes an object. The noun names what the activity leaves behind, sometimes a feared disaster that never arrives.

3. 3
   verbobsolete

   Present participle and gerund of imagin.

   Note

   Here an obsolete spelling and the modern verb meet in one form. Because imagine drops its final -e before -ing, imagining looks the same whichever base lies behind it. The difference shows only in the base form, where imagin stands beside imagine. Writers today should use imagine for the base verb, and the participle needs no adjustment.

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