imagination

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The formation of a mental image of something that is neither perceived as real nor present to the senses.
2. n. The mental image so formed.
3. n. The ability or tendency to form such images.
4. n. The ability to confront and deal with reality by using the creative power of the mind; resourcefulness: handled the problems with great imagination.
5. n. A traditional or widely held belief or opinion.
6. n. Archaic An unrealistic idea or notion; a fancy.
7. n. Archaic A plan or scheme.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act or faculty of forming a mental image of an object; the act or power of presenting to consciousness objects other than those directly and at that time produced by the action of the senses; the act or power of reproducing or recombining remembered images of sense-objects; especially, the higher form of this power exercised in poetry and art. Imagination is commonly divided into reproductive and productive; reproductive imagination being the act or faculty of reproducing images stored in the memory, under the suggestion of associated images; productive imagination being the creative imagination which designedly recombines former experiences into new images. The phrase productive imagination is also used in the Kantian philosophy to denote the pure transcendental imagination, or that faculty by which the parts of the intuitions of space and time are combined into continua.
2. n. An image in the mind; a formulated conception or idea.
3. n. The act of devising, planning, or scheming; a contrivance; scheme; device; plot.
4. n. A baseless or fanciful opinion.
5. n. Synonyms Imagination, Fancy. By derivation and early use fancy has the same meaning as imagination, but the words have become more and more distinctly separated. (See Wordsworth's preface to his “Lyrical Ballads.”) Imagination is the more profound, earnest, logical. Fancy is lighter, more sportive, and often more purely creative. We call “Hamlet” and “Macbeth” works of Shakspere's imagination, the “Midsummer Night's Dream” and “The Tempest” of his fancy.
6. n. In entomology, the act of transforming into an imago or of reaching the imaginal stage: said of insects completing their metamorphosis.

Wiktionary

1. n. The image-making power of the mind; the act of creating or reproducing ideally an object not previously perceived; the ability to create such images.
2. n. Particularly, construction of false images; fantasizing.
3. n. Creativity; resourcefulness.
4. n. A mental image formed by the action of the imagination as a faculty; a conception; a notion; an imagining; something imagined.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The imagine-making power of the mind; the power to create or reproduce ideally an object of sense previously perceived; the power to call up mental imagines.
2. n. The representative power; the power to reconstruct or recombine the materials furnished by direct apprehension; the complex faculty usually termed the plastic or creative power; the fancy.
3. n. The power to recombine the materials furnished by experience or memory, for the accomplishment of an elevated purpose; the power of conceiving and expressing the ideal.
4. n. A mental image formed by the action of the imagination as a faculty; a conception; a notion.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the formation of a mental image of something that is not perceived as real and is not present to the senses
2. n. the ability to form mental images of things or events
3. n. the ability to deal resourcefully with unusual problems