real

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. adj. Being or occurring in fact or actuality; having verifiable existence: real objects; a real illness.
2. adj. True and actual; not imaginary, alleged, or ideal: real people, not ghosts; a film based on real life.
3. adj. Of or founded on practical matters and concerns: a recent graduate experiencing the real world for the first time.
4. adj. Genuine and authentic; not artificial or spurious: real mink; real humility.
5. adj. Being no less than what is stated; worthy of the name: a real friend.
6. adj. Free of pretense, falsehood, or affectation: tourists hoping for a real experience on the guided tour.
7. adj. Not to be taken lightly; serious: in real trouble.
8. adj. Philosophy Existing objectively in the world regardless of subjectivity or conventions of thought or language.
9. adj. Relating to, being, or having value reckoned by actual purchasing power: real income; real growth.
10. adj. Physics Of, relating to, or being an image formed by light rays that converge in space.
11. adj. Mathematics Of, relating to, or being a real number.
12. adj. Law Of or relating to stationary or fixed property, such as buildings or land.
13. adv. Informal Very: I'm real sorry about that.
14. n. A thing or whole having actual existence. Often used with the: theories beyond the realm of the real.
15. n. Mathematics A real number.
16. idiom. for real Slang Truly so in fact or actuality: "Is this place for real? A wolf in a ... leisure suit and a cow in a print dress wait patiently on the couch in the lobby” ( Teresa Carson).
17. n. A silver coin formerly used in Spain and Latin America.
18. n. A monetary unit formerly used in Portugal.
19. n. See Table at currency.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. Actual; genuine; true; authentic; not imaginary, artificial, counterfeit, or factitious: as, real lace.
2. Of genuine character; not pretended or pretending; unassumed or unassuming.
3. Specifically, in philosophy, existing in or pertaining to things, and not words or thought merely; being independent of any person's thought about the subject; possessing characters independently of the attribution of them by any individual mind or any number of minds; not resulting from the mind's action: opposed to imaginary or intentional. Real differs from actual, inasmuch as what is only in germ or in posse, in so far as it has a power of developing into a definite actuality, is real, and independent of what we may think about it. Real objects are either external to the mind, when they are independent altogether of our thought, or they are internal, when they depend upon thought, but not upon thought about them.
4. Sincere; faithful; loyal.
5. Relating to things, not to persons; not personal.
6. In law, pertaining to or having the quality of things fixed or immovable. See real estate, etc., below.
7. In English ecclesiastical law, an agreement made between the owner of lands and the parson or vicar, with consent of the ordinary, that such lands shall be discharged from payment of tithes, in consequence of other land or recompense given to the parson in lieu and satisfaction thereof. Also called composition of tithes.
8. A distinction between real objects. The Scotists made subtle and elaborate definitions of this phrase.
9. Land, including with it whatever by nature or artificial annexation inheres with it as a part of it or as the means of its enjoyment, as minerals on or in the earth, standing or running water, growing trees, permanent buildings, and fences. In this sense the term refers to those physical objects of ownership which are immovable.
10. The ownership of or property in lands, etc.; any legal or equitable interest in lands, etc., except some minor, temporary, or inchoate rights which by the laws of most jurisdictions are deemed to be personal estate. “At common law, any estate in lands, etc., the date of the termination of which is not determined by or ascertainable from or at the date of the act which creates it, is real estate.” The line between the two classes of property is differently drawn in detail, according as the object of the law is to define what shall be taxed, or what shall go to the heir in case of intestacy as distinguished from what shall go through the administrator to the next of kin, or what shall come within the rules as to recording titles, or other purposes.
11. A science which has a determinate reality for its object, and is conversant about existences other than forms of thought: in this sense, mathematics is not a real science.
12. Synonyms and Real, Actual, Positive, veritable, substantial, essential. Real applies to that which certainly exists, as opposed to that which is imaginary or feigned: as, real cause for alarm; a real occurrence; a real person, and not a ghost or a shadow; real sorrow. Actual applies to that which is brought to be or to pass, as opposed to that which is possible, probable, conceivable, approximate, estimated, or guessed at. Actual has a rather new but natural secondary sense of present. Positive, from the idea of a thing's being placed, fixed, or established, is opposed to uncertain or doubtful.
13. n. That which is real; a real existence or object; a reality.
14. n. A realist.
15. n. The real thing; the genuine article.
16. Really; truly; very; quite.
17. Royal; regal; royally excellent or splendid.
18. n. A subsidiary silver coin and money of account in Spain and Spanish-American countries.
19. n. The current real of Spain (real de vellon) is one quarter of the peseta or franc, and worth about 5 United States cents. The Mexican real, corresponding to the old Spanish real de plata, is one eighth of a dollar (Mexican peso), and reckoned at 12½ cents The latter coin, both Spanish and Mexican, circulated largely in the United States down to about 1850, being called a Spanish or Mexican shilling in New York, a levy (see levy, 1) in the South, etc.
20. n. The big-eyed herring, or saury, Elops sauras.
21. In mathematics, involving no unit for number but the primitive unit, 1.
22. In geometry, appearing in a finite figure. For instance, any two coplanar circles oC and oA are said to intersect, but their intersection-points are real only if .
23. In optics, opposed to virtual: as, a real image, one formed by the actual convergence of waves brought to a focus by an optical system, as distinguished from the virtual image formed where the geometrical extensions of a group of rays meet.
24. n. In mathematics, a real number.

Wiktionary

1. n. A commodity; see reality.
2. n. grammar One of the three genders that the common gender can be separated into in the Scandinavian languages.
3. n. mathematics A real number.
4. n. obsolete A realist.
5. adj. That can be characterized as a confirmation of truth.
6. adj. That has physical existence.
7. adj. economics Having been adjusted to remove the effects of inflation; contrasted with nominal.
8. adj. economics Relating to the result of the actions of rational agents; relating to neoclassical economic models as opposed to Keynesian models.
9. adj. mathematics, of a number Being either a rational number, or the limit of a convergent infinite sequence of rational numbers: being one of a set of numbers with a one-to-one correspondence to the points on a line.
10. adj. law Relating to immovable tangible property.
11. adj. That is an exemplary or pungent instance of a class or type.
12. adj. genuine, not faked or substituted.
13. adj. Genuine, not artificial.
14. adj. slang Signifying meritorious qualities or actions especially in regards to enjoying life, prowess at sports and success wooing potential partners.
15. adv. US, colloquial really.
16. n. Former unit of currency of Spain and Spain's colonies.
17. n. A coin worth one real.
18. n. A unit of currency used in Portugal and its colonies from 1430 until 1911, and in Brazil from 1790 until 1942
19. n. A coin worth one real.
20. n. A unit of currency used in Brazil since 1994. Symbol: R$
21. n. A coin worth one real.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A former small Spanish silver coin; also, a denomination of money of account, formerly the unit of the Spanish monetary system.
2. adj. obsolete Royal; regal; kingly.
3. adj. Actually being or existing; not fictitious or imaginary.
4. adj. True; genuine; not artificial, counterfeit, or factitious; often opposed to ostensible
5. adj. obsolete Relating to things, not to persons.
6. adj. (Alg.) Having an assignable arithmetical or numerical value or meaning; not imaginary.
7. adj. (Law) Pertaining to things fixed, permanent, or immovable, as to lands and tenements.
8. n. obsolete A realist.

WordNet 3.0

1. adv. used as intensifiers; `real' is sometimes used informally for `really'; `rattling' is informal
2. n. an old small silver Spanish coin
3. adj. coinciding with reality
4. adj. not to be taken lightly
5. adj. capable of being treated as fact
6. n. the basic unit of money in Brazil; equal to 100 centavos
7. n. any rational or irrational number
8. adj. being or reflecting the essential or genuine character of something
9. adj. of, relating to, or representing an amount that is corrected for inflation
10. adj. being or occurring in fact or actuality; having verified existence; not illusory
11. adj. (of property) fixed or immovable
12. adj. no less than what is stated; worthy of the name
13. adj. having substance or capable of being treated as fact; not imaginary