Synonyms for imagination
ɪˌmædʒ əˈneɪ ʃənimag·i·na·tion

WiktionaryRate these synonyms:0.0 / 0 votes

1. imaginationnoun

   Antonyms:
   dullness

2. imaginationnoun

   Imagination is one of the most advanced human faculties.

   Antonyms:
   dullness

3. imaginationnoun

   You think someone's been following you? That's just your imagination.

   Antonyms:
   dullness

4. imaginationnoun

   His imagination makes him a valuable team member.

   Antonyms:
   dullness

5. imaginationnoun

   Antonyms:
   dullness

6. imaginationnoun

   Synonyms:
   fancy, creativity, invention, inventiveness, imaginativeness

English Synonyms and AntonymsRate these synonyms:4.0 / 1 vote

1. imagination

   The old psychology treated of the Reproductive Imagination, which simply reproduces the images that the mind has in any way acquired, and the Productive Imagination which modifies and combines mental images so as to produce what is virtually new. To this Reproductive Imagination President Noah Porter and others have given the name of phantasy or fantasy (many psychologists preferring the former spelling). Phantasy or fantasy, so understood, presents numerous and varied images, often combining them into new forms with exceeding vividness, yet without any true constructive power, but with the mind adrift, blindly and passively following the laws of association, and with reason and will in torpor; the mental images being perhaps as varied and as vivid, but also as purposeless and unsystematized as the visual images in a kaleidoscope; such fantasy (often loosely called imagination) appears in dreaming, reverie, somnambulism, and intoxication. Fantasy in ordinary usage simply denotes capricious or erratic fancy, as appears in the adjective fantastic. Imagination and fancy differ from fantasy in bringing the images and their combinations under the control of the will; imagination is the broader and higher term, including fancy; imagination is the act or power of imaging or of reimaging objects of perception or thought, of combining the products of knowledge in modified, new, or ideal forms — the creative or constructive power of the mind; while fancy is the act or power of forming pleasing, graceful, whimsical, or odd mental images, or of combining them with little regard to rational processes of construction; imagination in its lower form. Both fancy and imagination recombine and modify mental images; either may work with the other's materials; imagination may glorify the tiniest flower; fancy may play around a mountain or a star; the one great distinction between them is that fancy is superficial, while imagination is deep, essential, spiritual. Wordsworth, who was the first clearly to draw the distinction between the fancy and the imagination, states it as follows:

   To aggregate and to associate, to evoke and to combine, belong as well to the imagination as to the fancy; but either the materials evoked and combined are different; or they are brought together under a different law, and for a different purpose. Fancy does not require that the materials which she makes use of should be susceptible of changes in their constitution from her touch; and where they admit of modification, it is enough for her purpose if it be slight, limited, and evanescent. Directly the reverse of these are the desires and demands of the imagination. She recoils from everything but the plastic, the pliant, and the indefinite. She leaves it to fancy to describe Queen Mab as coming:

   'In shape no bigger than an agate stone
   On the forefinger of an alderman.'
   

   Having to speak of stature, she does not tell you that her gigantic angel was as tall as Pompey's Pillar; much less that he was twelve cubits or twelve hundred cubits high; or that his dimensions equalled those of Teneriffe or Atlas; because these, and if they were a million times as high, it would be the same, are bounded. The expression is, 'His stature reached the sky!' the illimitable firmament! — When the imagination frames a comparison, ... a sense of the truth of the likeness from the moment that it is perceived grows — and continues to grow — upon the mind; the resemblance depending less upon outline of form and feature than upon expression and effect, less upon casual and outstanding than upon inherent and internal properties.

   (The whole discussion from which the quotation is taken is worthy of, and will well repay, careful study.)

   Poetical Works, Pref. to Ed. of 1815, p. 646, app. [Troutman & Hayes '51.]

   So far as actual images are concerned, both fancy and imagination are limited to the materials furnished by the external world; it is remarkable that among all the representations of gods or demigods, fiends and demons, griffins and chimæras, the human mind has never invented one organ or attribute that is not presented in human or animal life; the lion may have a human head and an eagle's wings and claws, but in the various features, individually, there is absolutely nothing new. But imagination can transcend the work of fancy, and compare an image drawn from the external world with some spiritual truth born in the mind itself, or infuse a series of images with such a spiritual truth, molding them as needed for its more vivid expression.

   Synonyms:
   fancy, fantasy, phantasy

Princeton's WordNetRate these synonyms:1.0 / 1 vote

1. imagination, imaginativeness, visionnoun

   the formation of a mental image of something that is not perceived as real and is not present to the senses

   "popular imagination created a world of demons"; "imagination reveals what the world could be"

   Synonyms:
   imaginativeness, imaging, resourcefulness, resource, sight, visual sense, mental imagery, imagery, visual modality, visual sensation, vision

2. imagination, imaging, imagery, mental imagerynoun

   the ability to form mental images of things or events

   "he could still hear her in his imagination"

   Synonyms:
   imaginativeness, imaging, resourcefulness, resource, tomography, mental imagery, imagery, vision

3. resource, resourcefulness, imaginationnoun

   the ability to deal resourcefully with unusual problems

   "a man of resource"

   Synonyms:
   resourcefulness, imaging, resource, mental imagery, imagery, imaginativeness, vision

Matched Categories

1. • Ingenuity

Dictionary of English SynonymesRate these synonyms:0.0 / 0 votes

1. imaginationnoun

   Synonyms:
   conception (united with the faculty of recombining ideas so as to form a new creation), invention, ideality, FANCY, creative power, plastic power

Synonyms, Antonyms & Associated WordsRate these synonyms:3.0 / 1 vote

1. imaginationnoun

   Synonyms:
   fancy, conception, notion, conceit, figment, phantasm

2. imaginationnoun

   Synonyms:
   fantasy

PPDB, the paraphrase databaseRate these paraphrases:0.0 / 0 votes

1. List of paraphrases for "imagination":

   fantasy, imaginary, fiction, creativity, inventiveness, fancy

Suggested Resources

1. imagination

   Song lyrics by imagination -- Explore a large variety of song lyrics performed by imagination on the Lyrics.com website.

How to pronounce imagination?

How to say imagination in sign language?

Usage in printed sourcesFrom: 

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Words popularity by usage frequency

How to use imagination in a sentence?

1. Stephen King:

   You cannot condemn a man for what may only be a figment of your own imagination.

2. W. Somerset Maugham:

   To regard the imagination as metaphysics is to think of it as part of life, and to think of it as part of life is to realize the extent of artifice. We live in the mind.

3. Mariana Fulger:

   As truth reality contains a large amount of imagination; in some cases, of lack of imagination.

4. Mohammed Ali:

   The man who has no imagination has no Wings

5. Maria Mitchell:

   We especially need imagination in science.