Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Royal; regal; royally excellent or splendid.
  • Actual; genuine; true; authentic; not imaginary, artificial, counterfeit, or factitious: as, real lace.
  • Of genuine character; not pretended or pretending; unassumed or unassuming.
  • 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.
  • Sincere; faithful; loyal.
  • Relating to things, not to persons; not personal.
  • In law, pertaining to or having the quality of things fixed or immovable. See real estate, etc., below.
  • 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.
  • A distinction between real objects. The Scotists made subtle and elaborate definitions of this phrase.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • noun That which is real; a real existence or object; a reality.
  • noun A realist.
  • noun The real thing; the genuine article.
  • Really; truly; very; quite.
  • noun A subsidiary silver coin and money of account in Spain and Spanish-American countries.
  • noun 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.
  • In mathematics, involving no unit for number but the primitive unit, 1.
  • 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 .
  • 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.
  • noun In mathematics, a real number.
  • noun The big-eyed herring, or saury, Elops sauras.

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

  • adjective Actually being or existing; not fictitious or imaginary.
  • adjective True; genuine; not artificial, counterfeit, or factitious; often opposed to ostensible
  • adjective obsolete Relating to things, not to persons.
  • adjective (Alg.) Having an assignable arithmetical or numerical value or meaning; not imaginary.
  • adjective (Law) Pertaining to things fixed, permanent, or immovable, as to lands and tenements.
  • adjective (Law) such chattels as are annexed to, or savor of, the realty, as terms for years of land. See Chattel.
  • adjective (Law) an action for the recovery of real property.
  • adjective (Law) lands or real estate in the hands of the heir, chargeable with the debts of the ancestor.
  • adjective (Eccl. 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.
  • adjective lands, tenements, and hereditaments; freehold interests in landed property; property in houses and land.
  • adjective (R. C. Ch.) the actual presence of the body and blood of Christ in the eucharist, or the conversion of the substance of the bread and wine into the real body and blood of Christ; transubstantiation. In other churches there is a belief in a form of real presence, not however in the sense of transubstantiation.
  • adjective (Civil Law) a burden imposed upon one estate in favor of another estate of another proprietor.
  • adjective obsolete Royal; regal; kingly.
  • noun A former small Spanish silver coin; also, a denomination of money of account, formerly the unit of the Spanish monetary system.
  • noun obsolete A realist.

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

  • noun Former unit of currency of Spain and Spain's colonies.
  • noun A coin worth one real.
  • noun A commodity; see reality.
  • noun grammar One of the three genders that the common gender can be separated into in the Scandinavian languages.
  • noun mathematics A real number.
  • noun obsolete A realist.
  • adjective That can be characterized as a confirmation of truth.
  • adjective That has physical existence.
  • adjective economics Having been adjusted to remove the effects of inflation; contrasted with nominal.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Spanish real ("royal"), from Latin rēgālis ("regal, royal").

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French reel, from Late Latin reālis ("actual"), from Latin rēs ("matter, thing"), of unknown origin.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Portuguese real ("royal"), from Latin rēgālis ("regal; royal").

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Examples

  • But the underlying conceptualization is still Keynesian, meaning that consumption and investment functions are real, except for some randomness, and not based directly and explicitly on individual actors' decisions based on *perceived* wealth -- which may be very different from *real* wealth because of a lack of proper asset pricing models stabilizing asset valuations around equilibrium market prices.

    In Defense of Macroeconomists, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

  • It really hit me that these are * real* people, not the faux populists dished up by the GOP - real people of intelligence and substance.

    Tell Us Your Election Night Experiences... 2009

  • Thus a detailed study of works of literature and their represented objects could serve to explicate the purely intentional mode of being, with a view to contrasting this with the real mode of being and ultimately demonstrating that it is impossible to reduce the ˜real world™ to the status of a purely intentional creation.

    Roman Ingarden Thomasson, Amie 2008

  • Thus the realism/idealism controversy can be reconfigured as the controversy over whether the so-called ˜real world™ has the real or purely intentional mode of being.

    Roman Ingarden Thomasson, Amie 2008

  • Of course the strategy of the novel is that it makes the northern fantasy land much more real, more detailed and more interesting, than the �real� reality of the American college town where the action takes place.

    Mark Thwaite interviews Peter Davidson Jenny Davidson 2006

  • And success in real life is often much, much more satisfying, because it relies on *real* ability.

    No Surrender 2006

  • You are very much a _man_, my Conway; a real, _real_ man, and I love you!

    Triplanetary 1927

  • There was not the slightest doubt that all its shirring was of real, _real_ silk!

    In Old Kentucky Edward Marshall 1901

  • You must realize that you -- the _real_ You -- are not only existent, and real, but that you are in touch with all else that is real, and that the roots of your being are grounded in the Absolute itself.

    A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga William Walker Atkinson 1897

  • And, as a fact, we do not know that real musicians, _real_ Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha and

    Hortus Vitae Essays on the Gardening of Life Vernon Lee 1895

Comments

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  • Is the stuff you don't like 'real' or 'unreal'? see: I plus Not-I equals Everything.

    December 22, 2006

  • as the monetary unit of Brazil the plural is reais

    July 8, 2008