imaginative vs imaginary
Definitions
adjective
- (used of persons or artifacts) marked by independence and creativity in thought or action
Examples
But the avant-garde has found support for its imaginative approach from such sciences as biology.
Some menswear shops do sell more imaginative clothes - but the assistants have rarely met any customers over the age of 36.
Plunged in darkness again, the man, whom Rose had called unimaginative, suffered all the untold agony of soul which had been hers during the moment in which she had been forced to make up her mind and carry out the act, only his anguish was the more intense, for hers was the quick action and his the forced inaction of a man bound to a stake, within full sight of a tragedy being enacted upon a loved one.
Definitions
adjective
- not based on fact; existing only in the imagination
noun
- (mathematics) a number of the form a+bi where a and b are real numbers and i is the square root of -1
Examples
The abuse of libel laws is not imaginary.
Gob Woodhull, an imaginary son of the real 19th-century feminist, spiritualist and free-love advocate Victoria Woodhull, loses his twin brother in the Civil War and builds a vast and elaborate machine whose purpose is to "grieve" so efficiently that it will bring all of history's dead back to life.
Every now and then a graceful movement of his left arm through the air preceded his entry into the music, as though he were offering a cue to an imaginary force.
