# real

Pronunciation: say "REEL" US /ɹil/, UK /ɹiːl/

## Adjective

1. Actually existing or occurring in the world; not fictitious or imaginary.
   - Simple: Existing or happening in fact, not just imagined or made up.
   - _Scientists work hard to tell real phenomena from optical illusions._
   - _The character felt so vivid that readers forgot she wasn't real._
2. Genuinely what it is said or seems to be, rather than existing in name or appearance only.
   - Simple: True in fact, not just in name or in how things look.
   - _Despite her official title, she had no real power._
   - _Critics argued that the real purpose of the new rule was to silence the protesters._
3. Genuine rather than artificial, fake, or pretended, whether of a thing or of a feeling.
   - Simple: Genuine and not fake, or truly felt and not pretended.
   - _Experts confirmed the painting was a real Vermeer, not a forgery._
   - _She insisted on real flowers at the wedding rather than silk ones._
4. Relating to immovable property such as land and buildings.
   - Simple: About land and buildings, not movable things.
   - _The contract dealt only with real property, excluding furniture and cars._
   - _Taxes on real property help fund local schools and roads._
6. Complete and absolute; used to emphasize the full degree of something.
   - Simple: Used to stress that something is total or very great.
   - _The flooded basement was a real disaster._
   - _Their new car was a real bargain at that price._
8. Showing genuine, grounded qualities and true accomplishment rather than a put-on imitation of success. *(slang)*
   - Simple: Genuine and honest, not fake or just showing off.
   - _Fans loved that the artist stayed real instead of chasing a flashy image._
   - _In that crowd, being real mattered more than showing off money you didn't have._
7. Adjusted to remove the effects of inflation, so the figure reflects actual purchasing power rather than face value.
   - Simple: Measured after the effect of rising prices is removed, so it shows true buying power.
   - _Economists compared real wages across decades to see whether living standards had truly improved._
   - _Once adjusted for inflation, the company's real revenue had barely grown in ten years._
9. Designating a number that is either rational or the limit of a sequence of rationals, corresponding to a point on the number line.
   - Simple: Describing a number that fits somewhere on the number line.
   - _Every real solution to the equation can be plotted on a single axis._
   - _The polynomial has real coefficients but no real roots._
12. Marked by firmness and directness: willing to confront a problem or person rather than avoid it. *(slang)*
   - Simple: Bold and direct, ready to face a problem head-on.
   - _She got real with the team, naming the issues no one else would mention._
   - _Customers want a company that gets real about its failures instead of hiding behind public relations._
15. In economics, relating to goods, production and other non-monetary quantities rather than to money, as in the real economy.
   - Simple: In economics, about goods and production rather than money.
   - _The debate pitted real business cycle theory against Keynesian demand-side explanations._
   - _Economists in this school favor real models where outcomes flow from rational individual decisions._

## Adverb

5. Really; very. Used to intensify the word that follows. *(colloquial, US)*
   - Simple: Very, used before a word to make it stronger.
   - _She was real happy to see her old friends again._
   - _We got home real late after the concert._

## Noun

10. Any number lying on the continuous number line, including whole numbers, fractions, and irrational quantities.
   - Simple: Any number that has its own point on the number line, such as 2, one half or pi.
   - _The function accepts any real as input and returns its absolute value._
   - _Programmers store each measurement as a real to allow decimal values._
11. The basic unit of currency of Brazil since 1994, symbolized R$. (pronounced: say "ray-AHL" US /ɹeɪˈɑl/, UK /ɹeɪˈɑːl/)
   - Simple: The money used in Brazil since 1994, shown as R$.
   - _The market listed the price as one real per kilo._
   - _Tourists exchanged their dollars for Brazilian reais at the airport._
13. A former unit of currency of Spain and the territories it colonized, or a coin worth one such unit. (pronounced: say "ray-AHL" US /ɹeɪˈɑl/, UK /ɹeɪˈɑːl/)
   - Simple: An old unit of Spanish money, or a coin worth that much, once used in Spain and its colonies.
   - _Spanish soldiers were once paid a few reales a day._
   - _Divers found a worn silver real among the coins from the old wreck._
14. A unit of currency used in Portugal and its empire from about 1430 to 1911, and in Brazil until 1942. (pronounced: say "ray-AHL" US /ɹeɪˈɑl/, UK /ɹeɪˈɑːl/)
   - Simple: An old kind of money used in Portugal and Brazil for hundreds of years.
   - _Colonial accounts were kept in réis long before the modern Brazilian currency existed._
   - _The old Portuguese real circulated for nearly five centuries before being replaced._

## Noun

16. In medieval philosophy, a realist, one who held that universals such as redness really exist. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: An old word for a thinker who believed that general ideas like redness truly exist.

## Other meanings

- (noun) In some descriptions of Swedish and other Scandinavian grammar, the part of the common gender made up of nouns for things, which take the pronoun den ('it') rather than 'he' or 'she'.

## Origin

**Meanings 1–10, 12, 15–16** — Latin rēs ("matter, thing"), which goes back to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "wealth, goods," gave Late Latin reālis ("actual"). That became Old French reel and then Middle English real.
**Meaning 13** — Latin rēgālis ("regal, royal") gave Spanish real ("royal"), and English borrowed this sense from Spanish. Regal, royal, riyal, and ariary are doublets.
**Meanings 11, 14** — Latin rēgālis ("regal, royal") became Portuguese real ("royal"), the source of this sense. Its doublets are regal, royal, riyal, and ariary.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/real (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).