Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Not real or substantial; illusory.
- adj. Slang So remarkable as to elicit disbelief; fantastic.
- adj. Surreal.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Not real; unsubstantial; fanciful; ideal.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. contrived by art rather than nature
- adj. lacking in reality or substance or genuineness; not corresponding to acknowledged facts or criteria
- adj. lacking material form or substance; unreal.
- adj. not actually such; being or seeming fanciful or imaginary
Examples
“Only what you call the unreal can last unchanged for a while,' the painter said, catching at the word she had used, and thinking more of his art than of her.”
“What I find to be even more unreal is the number of these students who are admitted to universities.”
Test Scores and Economic Performance, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“That gash is frickin 'unreal - looked like a great PPV.”
“The result of this admixture of the real and the unreal is confusion thrice confounded.”
“And even though the annual address is one of the few things you can watch on commercial television without ads, I chose to TiVo it and watch it a few hours later, in unreal time.”
“Something a little unreal is the hardcover edition of the book.”
“Undercover fascists will call it unreal, un-American, and propaganda, and say that it only harms the cause of Jewish people by calling attention to it.”
Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood
“Everything happens in unreal, slow and ponderous time.”
“Charged with an impossible task of remaining realistic in unreal settings, character is split, its integrity opened to the vacillations of external context.”
“Calling it unreal is likely a typical reaction for visitors to the southern Colorado River drainage, a high-altitude desert of stunning beauty -- some of it natural, some not.”

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