Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Having a lively imagination, especially a creative imagination.
  • adjective Created by, indicative of, or characterized by imagination or creativity.
  • adjective Tending to indulge in the fanciful or in make-believe.
  • adjective Having no truth; false.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Forming images; endowed with imagination; given to imagining: as, the imaginative faculty; an imaginative person.
  • Characterized by or resulting from imagination; exhibiting or indicating the faculty of imagination.
  • Inquisitive; suspicious; jealous.
  • Synonyms Inventive, creative, poetical. See imaginary.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Proceeding from, and characterized by, the imagination, generally in the highest sense of the word.
  • adjective Given to imagining; full of images, fancies, etc.; having a quick imagination; conceptive; creative.
  • adjective obsolete Unreasonably suspicious; jealous.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective having a lively or creative imagination
  • adjective tending to be fanciful or inventive
  • adjective false or imagined

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective (used of persons or artifacts) marked by independence and creativity in thought or action

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Within the light-realm levels, that which you term reality is illusion and that which you term imaginative fantasy is reality.

    Songs of the Arcturians Patricia L. Pereira 1996

  • Within the light-realm levels, that which you term reality is illusion and that which you term imaginative fantasy is reality.

    Songs of the Arcturians Patricia L. Pereira 1996

  • Let us but get that way of looking at things which we call imaginative, and how everything alters.

    AE in the Irish Theosophist George William Russell 1901

  • Harold Alison as a specimen of a vigorous physical development so perfectly balanced as to be in a manner self-adjusting, without need of what he called imaginative influences.

    My Young Alcides Charlotte Mary Yonge 1862

  • Can they not have a precious decade or so to soar in imaginative literature before we drag them back down to earth?

    2009 April 22 « One-Minute Book Reviews 2009

  • Until that moment, we get lots of characters fighting each other in imaginative, slightly puzzling ways, escaping perils of varying degrees of menace and lunacy, or realizing just how out of their depth they actually are.

    Pieces of One Piece 2010

  • On the other hand, it does take a certain imaginative leap to understand why anyone would make a film based on the Valiant comic series Bloodshot, which despite strong sales is really just a recombination of a bunch of ‘rogue master killer’ comic book character tropes.

    Matthew Vaughn’s Next Film to be Adaptation of Bloodshot? | /Film 2010

  • However, it takes a really good school system to continue to teach in imaginative ways while also dealing with the NCLB requirements. jonnybutter Says:

    Matthew Yglesias » Ungovernable 2009

  • But there is room in imaginative fiction for many devices.

    On John Updike « Tales from the Reading Room 2009

  • Once buyers and sellers are free, they will deploy their assets in imaginative ways in order to extract the most value from their own dollars, and their own labor.

    Coyote Blog » Blog Archive » Why Obamacare 2.0 is Like Cap-and-Trade 2010

Comments

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  • [imaginative:

    Having a lively imagination, especially a creative imagination.

    Created by, indicative of, or characterized by imagination or creativity. Tending to indulge in the fanciful or in make-believe.

    April 17, 2011