Roget's Thesaurus

#515. Imagination

Nouns

imagination; originality; invention; fancy; inspiration; verve. warm imagination, heated imagination, excited imagination, sanguine imagination, ardent imagination, fiery imagination, boiling imagination, wild imagination, bold imagination, daring imagination, playful imagination, lively imagination, fertile imagination, fancy. mind's eye; such stuff as dreams are made of [Tempest]. ideality, idealism; romanticism, utopianism, castle-building. dreaming; phrensy, frenzy; ecstasy, extasy; calenture etc. (delirium) 503; reverie, trance; day dream, golden dream; somnambulism. conception, Vorstellung [G.], excogitation, a fine frenzy;" cloudland, dreamland; flight of fancy, fumes of fancy; thick coming fancies [Macbeth]; creation of the brain, coinage of the brain; imagery. conceit, maggot, figment, myth, dream, vision, shadow, chimera; phantasm, phantasy; fantasy, fancy; whim, whimsey, whimsy; vagary, rhapsody, romance, gest, geste, extravaganza; air drawn dagger, bugbear, nightmare. flying Dutchman, great sea serpent, man in the moon, castle in the air, pipe dream, pie-in-the-sky, chateau en Espagne [Fr.]; Utopia, Atlantis, happy valley, millennium, fairyland; land of Prester John, kindgom of Micomicon; work of fiction etc. (novel) 594; Arabian nights; le pot au lait [Fr.]; dream of Alnashar etc. (hope) 858. illusion etc. (error) 495; phantom etc. (fallacy of vision) 443; Fata Morgana etc. (ignis fatuus) [Lat.] 423; vapor etc. (cloud) 353; stretch of the imagination etc. (exaggeration) 549; mythogenesis. idealist, romanticist, visionary; mopus; romancer, dreamer; somnambulist; rhapsodist etc. (fanatic) 504; castle-buildier, fanciful projector.

Verbs

imagine, fancy, conceive; idealize, realize; dream, dream of, dream up; give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name [Midsummer Night's Dream]. create, originate, devise, invent, coin, fabricate; improvise, strike out something new. set one's wits to work; strain one's invention, crack one's invention; rack one's brains, ransack one's brains, cudgel one's brains; excogitate; brainstorm. give play, give the reins, give a loose to the imagination, give fancy; indulge in reverie. visualize, envision, conjure up a vision; fancy oneself, represent oneself, picture, picture-oneself, figure to oneself; vorstellen [G.]. float in the mind; suggest itself etc. (thought) 451.

Adjectives

imagined etc. v.; ben trovato [It.]; air drawn, airbuilt. imagining etc. v., imaginative; original, inventive, creative, fertile. romantic, high flown, flighty, extravagant, fanatic, enthusiastic, unrealistic, Utopian, Quixotic. ideal, unreal; in the clouds, in nubibus [Lat.]; unsubsantial etc. 4; illusory etc. (fallacious) 495. fabulous, legendary; mythical, mythic, mythological; chimerical; imaginary, visionary; notional; fancy, fanciful, fantastic, fantastical; whimsical; fairy, fairy-like; gestic.

Phrases

a change came o'er the spirit of my dream [Byron]; aegri somnia vana [Lat.]; dolphinum appingit sylvis in fluctibus aprum [Horace]; fancy light from fancy caught [Tennyson]; imagination rules the world [Napoleon]; l'imagination gallope [Fr.], le jugement ne va que le pas [Fr.]; musaeo contingens cuncta lepore [Lat.] [Lucretius]; tous songes sont mensonges [Fr.]; Wahrheil und Dichtung [G.].