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imagine

verb

Simple meaning

Form a mental image of something that is not present or that is not the case.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

ihmajuhn

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ɪˈmædʒən

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

verb

  1. Form a mental image of something that is not present or that is not the case

  2. transitive

    To form a mental image of something; to envision or create something in one's mind.

  3. transitive

    To believe in something created by one's own mind, often something false.

  4. transitive

    To assume; to suppose.

  5. transitive

    To conjecture; to guess.

  6. intransitive

    To use one's imagination.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
A2 · Elementary (estimated)
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Form a mental image of something that is not present or that is not the case

Used this way, imagine is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
No strong connotation
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use imagine

  • “I imagine she earned a lot of money with her new novel.”verb

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

well imagineeasily imaginenow imagine

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • imaginationnounDerived noun · specialist

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

  • imaginarynounDerived noun

    A number of the form a+bi where a and b are real numbers and i is the square root of -1.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: form a mental image of something that is not present

conceive of

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.