ə̇ˌmajəˈnāshən noun
( -s )
Etymology: Middle English imaginacioun, from Middle French imagination, from Latin imagination-, imaginatio, from imaginatus (past participle of imaginari to imagine) + -ion-, -io -ion — more at imagine
1. : an act or process of forming a conscious idea or mental image of something never before wholly perceived in reality by the imaginer (as through a synthesis of remembered elements of previous sensory experiences or ideas as modified by unconscious mechanisms of defense) ; also : the ability or gift of forming such conscious ideas or mental images especially for the purposes of artistic or intellectual creation
our simple apprehension of corporeal objects, if present, is sense; if absent, is imagination — Joseph Glanvill
2.
a. : creative ability : genius
the great imaginations of literature
b. : ability to confront and deal with a problem : resourcefulness
the attempt shows suggestions of the imagination that the situation demands
3. obsolete : a plotting or scheming especially of evil : plot
all their vengeance and all their imaginations against me — Lam 3:60 (Authorized Version)
4.
a. : a mental image, conception, or notion formed by the action of imagination
b. : a creation of the mind ; especially : an idealized or poetic creation
the gory imaginations of folk poetry
c. : fanciful or empty assumption
idle imaginations
5. : popular or traditional belief : usual or accepted conception
the Magna Charta … has operated in the meaning given it in imagination rather than by its literal contents — John Dewey
Synonyms:
fancy , fantasy , phantasy : imagination , freer of derogatory connotations than the other terms, is the most comprehensive, applying to the power of creating, in the mind or in an outward form as in a literary work, images of things once known but absent, of things never seen or never seen in their entirety, or things actually nonexistent, of things created new from diverse old elements, or of things perfected or idealized; it may carry the implication of mere tricky concoction, as of things unreal or odd, but is more frequently nearer the other extreme in suggesting the genuine artist's gift of perceiving more deeply or essentially and creating the interestingly and the significantly new and vital
all youth lives much in reverie; thereby the stronger minds anticipate and rehearse themselves for life in a thousand imaginations — H.G.Wells
imagination being little else than another name for illusion — Samuel Butler
the imagination is able to manipulate nature as by creating three legs and five arms but it is not able to create a totally new nature — Wallace Stevens
the production of vivid images, usually visual images … is the commonest and the least interesting thing which is referred to by imagination — I.A.Richards
a product of fancy rather than imagination — if one accepts fancy as decorative and imagination as creative — Pamela L. Travers
imagination, in his opinion, gets at relationships that are true at the deepest level of experience — F.A.Pottle
imagination is something akin to what it was in Wordsworth, a means of deepest insight and sympathy — Roy Pascal
it is only through imagination that men become aware of what the world might be — Bertrand Russell
fancy now usually suggests the power to conceive and give expression to images of things removed from reality, usually of things purely, sometimes frivolously though often delightfully, imaginary, often contrasting with imagination in suggesting a more superficial often factitious power of inventing the novel or unreal by recombining existing elements as opposed to the imagination's gift of grasping a deeper, more organic reality
like all weak men of a vivid fancy, he was constantly framing dramas of which he was the towering lord — G.D.Brown
the associative faculty performs, to a varying extent in individual cases, constantly shifting arrangements and rearrangements of the data of observation, thought, feeling … which Coleridge distinguishes from imagination by the word fancy — George Whalley
in a creative artist the imagination functions … in three ways. It is partly mere fancy, which moves happily into make-believe — K.P.Kempton
fantasy or phantasy suggests the power of unrestrained, often extravagant or delusive, fancy, stressing the unreal more than fancy; phantasy is used more frequently than fantasy in the technical sense of image-making power in general
hard to say where the actuality ends and the fantasy begins in these sketches of life — B.C.L.Keelan
fairy stories and fantasy are phenomenally popular — Lavinia R. Davis
an appealing fantasy, though its appeal does not lie in what is fantastic about it. It lies in what is realistic and homely — Time
a fantasy … may be distinguished from the representation of something that actually exists, but it is not opposed to “reality” and not an “escape” from reality. Thus, the idea of a rational society, or the image of a good house to be built, or the story of something that never happened, is a fantasy — Lionel Trilling
this mechanical man or robot idea has been decidedly overdone in the writings of fantasy — C.C.Furnas
a mixture … of comic phantasy, improbable adventure and rainbow colors — G.E.Fox
a novelist is a person who has a highly developed gift of phantasy — Bernard De Voto
its invention is based on the extinction of a wish phantasy belonging to the period of puberty — D.F.Tait