#515. Imagination. -- N. 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[obs3], frenzy; ecstasy, extasy[obs3]; calenture &c. (delirium) 503 [obs3]; reverie, trance; day dream, golden dream; somnambulism.
conception, Vorstellung[Ger], excogitation[obs3], "a fine frenzy"; cloudland[obs3], 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[obs3], whimsy; vagary, rhapsody, romance, gest[obs3], geste[obs3], 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[obs3], happy valley, millennium, fairyland; land of Prester John, kindgom of Micomicon; work of fiction &c. (novel) 594; Arabian nights[obs3]; le pot au lait[Fr]; dream of Alnashar &c. (hope) 858 [obs3].
illusion &c. (error) 495; phantom &c. (fallacy of vision) 443; Fata Morgana &c. (ignis fatuus) 423 [Lat]; vapor &c. (cloud) 353; stretch of the imagination &c. (exaggeration) 549; mythogenesis[obs3].
idealist, romanticist, visionary; mopus[obs3]; romancer, dreamer; somnambulist; rhapsodist &c. (fanatic) 504; castle-buildier, fanciful projector.
V. 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[obs3]; 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[Ger].
float in the mind; suggest itself &c. (thought) 451.
Adj. imagined &c. v.; ben trovato[It]; air drawn, airbuilt[obs3].
imagining &cv. 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[obs3] &c. 4; illusory &c. (fallacious) 495.
fabulous, legendary; mythical, mythic, mythological; chimerical; imaginary, visionary; notional; fancy, fanciful, fantastic, fantastical[obs3]; whimsical; fairy, fairy-like; gestic[obs3].
Phr. "a change came o'er the spirit of my dream" [Byron]; aegri somnia vana[Lat][obs3]; dolphinum appingit sylvis in fluctibus aprum [obs3][Latin][Horace]; "fancy light from fancy caught" [Tennyson]; "imagination rules the world" [Napoleon]; l'imagination gallope[Fr], le jugement ne va que le pas[French]; musaeo contingens cuncta lepore [Latin][Lucretius]; tous songes sont mensonges[French]; Wahrheil und Dichtung[German].