What is another word for imagination?

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

This thesaurus page includes all potential synonyms, words with the same meaning and similar terms for the word imagination.

Wiktionary0.0 / 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 Antonyms4.0 / 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.

Princeton's WordNet1.0 / 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

Dictionary of English Synonymes0.0 / 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 Words3.0 / 1 vote

  1. imaginationnoun

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

  2. imaginationnoun

    Synonyms:
    fantasy

PPDB, the paraphrase database0.0 / 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?

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Words popularity by usage frequency

rankingword
#804resource
#1735fiction
#1886vision
#1996fantasy
#4166imaging
#4976sight
#6823fancy
#7155invention
#7542creativity
#7999imagination
#10198imagery
#15937imaginary
#21757tomography
#41420phantasy
#75367resourcefulness
#80138inventiveness

How to use imagination in a sentence?

  1. Christina Ricci:

    I loved working, i loved being a kid who had a talent. I loved being good at something. I loved all that positive reinforcement I got every day. I loved getting to use my imagination in a way that really created things. It was incredible to be able to do that so young.

  2. Kevin Systrom:

    Entrepreneurs don't stay forever and I was actually amazed that we were on the far side of the average, it's kind of like a rocket. You have to aim it in the right direction, take your hands off and let it go... [ Instagram ] didn't feel done by any stretch of the imagination but it felt like it was in orbit.

  3. Elvira Swartch Lorenzo:

    It doesn’t matter what you think you’re trying to represent. It doesn’t matter that you think that’s how you make children happy. It doesn’t matter if it’s a tradition. If you paint yourself a color that is not yours, it is racist, the parade helps to normalize slavery as something harmless and inconsequential in the collective imagination, which is completely untrue.

  4. Ava DuVernay:

    Hollywood is like the boyfriend who doesn't call you as often, that's kind of like what Hollywood is to women filmmakers, (There is) a little a bit of neglect in terms of recognizing the imagination and talent women filmmakers have ... of older actresses who might be past the window of when the industry says they're valuable. There's so much of that going on so it's certainly something we all have to work to correct.

  5. Hillary Clinton:

    Leaders in the House and Senate won't even allow a vote on whether we should prevent people on the no-fly list from buying guns, including possible terrorists, it is just beyond ones imagination; these are people too dangerous to be let on airplanes but Congress won't stop them from getting guns. It is just something that makes no sense.


Translations for imagination

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"imagination." Synonyms.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 Mar. 2024. <https://www.synonyms.com/synonym/imagination>.

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