imagined 1 of 2

adjective

as in imaginary
not real and existing only in the imagination got needlessly upset about imagined dangers

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

imagined

2 of 2

verb

past tense of imagine
1
as in envisioned
to form a mental picture of she was determined to have the wedding that she had always imagined

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2
as in thought
to have as an opinion I imagine that's true, but you still have to prove it

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
3
as in guessed
to form an opinion from little or no evidence I imagine things will change rapidly once we begin

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of imagined
Adjective
An imagined 2014 case involving State Farm was cited to convince a judge that the company was, ultimately, not responsible for covering all the damage to the plaintiff’s home. — Rebecca Ellis, Los Angeles Times, 19 Aug. 2026 Anemoia is essentially an imagined memory, a longing built from movies, photographs, and secondhand stories rather than lived experience. — Nick Lichtenberg, Fortune, 14 Aug. 2026 The transition from republic to autocracy is narrated through (imagined) letters and journals of his closest advisors, friends, and family. — Literary Hub, 12 Aug. 2026 Over the course of 13 test flights, SpaceX has attempted to fly Starship along roughly the same suborbital path, while the company has tweaked, re-imagined and designed around various issues that have emerged throughout the flight campaign. — Jackie Wattles, CNN Money, 3 Aug. 2026 Not always very precisely balanced between horror, homage and mystery, this intriguing if unevenly realized construct will nonetheless lure genre fans and nostalgists alike with its imagined back chapter of golden-age Hollywood. — Dennis Harvey, Variety, 31 July 2026 Altman said earlier this week that humanity has entered the technological singularity, the long imagined point when machine intelligence begins advancing faster than people can reliably predict or direct. — Ron Schmelzer, Forbes.com, 28 July 2026 Thankfully, there’s a wonderful piece of technology called AI out there that’s perfect for realizing the juvenile aesthetic predilections of stunted creatives who want to wallow in an imagined idea of what the past was like. — Frank Landymore, Futurism, 22 July 2026 In our imagined scenario in which the Chargers are an unstoppable fantasy machine in 2026, Mitchell will be cartoonishly good. — Andy Behrens, New York Times, 21 July 2026
Verb
Cody enlisted as a young man and paid a price none of us could have imagined. — Vanessa Chism, Baltimore Sun, 23 Aug. 2026 The barrel had been punctured several times and dumped far offshore, Spencer said, but whoever discarded the remains likely never imagined the reservoir’s shoreline would one day retract hundreds of feet. — Elizabeth Wolfe, CNN Money, 21 Aug. 2026 Their hopes for a new beginning quickly collide with a far more difficult reality than Lucila imagined, forcing her to navigate the emotional weight of displacement, fractured family bonds and the struggle to build a life in an unfamiliar country. — Alex Ritman, Variety, 20 Aug. 2026 In 2021, the name Quandale Dingle was seen on an unlogged-out computer screen, and by the end of the year, several creators imagined the unknown man's human form in memetic fashion. — Owen Carry, USA Today, 20 Aug. 2026 His corruption and abuses of power have been let loose at a scale that was previously only imagined. — Jonathan Chait, The Atlantic, 20 Aug. 2026 The Outer Banks co-creators imagined the series would have a five-season run from the very beginning. — Kelly Allen, PEOPLE, 20 Aug. 2026 Jacobsen, after interrogating scientific and security experts around the world, has imagined an accident at a Siberian lab that launches a runaway outbreak. — The Week Us, TheWeek, 19 Aug. 2026 The maps in today’s fantasy epics are distant cousins of the woodcut that illustrated the first edition of Utopia, and which imagined the faraway island. — Carline Tromp, The Dial, 18 Aug. 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for imagined
  1. imaginary
  2. envisioned
  3. thought
  4. guessed
  5. fictional
  6. dreamed
  7. believed
  8. assumed
Adjective
  • Out on a wooden platform extending over San Diego’s Mission Bay, young women sway from side to side, riding an imaginary wave to the beats.
    — Kailyn Brown, Los Angeles Times, 21 Aug. 2026
  • Just before the pandemic, Manhattan’s MCC Theater staged a show called All the Natalie Portmans, about a gay Black teenage cinephile who envisions the actor as a kind of manic pixie imaginary friend.
    — Hillary Busis, Vanity Fair, 17 Aug. 2026
Definition of imaginary
Verb
  • The implementation of these checks and balances can be seen as tactical and their uses have evolved over time in ways the Founders might not have envisioned.
    — Tracy Grant, Encyclopedia Britannica, 26 Aug. 2026
  • The hospital is envisioned as the centerpiece of a larger health care network.
    — Jamal Goss, CBS News, 26 Aug. 2026
Definition of envisioned
Verb
  • Many of those thought to have been involved in Shakur’s fatal shooting have since died.
    — Lisa Respers France, CNN Money, 24 Aug. 2026
  • Kaleigh Theriault, beverage alcohol thought leader at NielsenIQ, told Food & Wine that the shift is already showing up in industry numbers.
    — Hanna Wickes, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 24 Aug. 2026
Definition of thought
Verb
  • The big reason passkeys are safer is that they can't be stolen, copied, or guessed.
    — Jon Martindale, PC Magazine, 7 Aug. 2026
  • Sometimes PLCs have no passwords or easily guessed ones, security experts told CBS News.
    — Aimee Picchi, CBS News, 6 Aug. 2026
Definition of guessed
Adjective
  • The first season was filmed in Wales and set in the fictional North Wales village of Morfa Halen.
    — Georg Szalai, HollywoodReporter, 26 Aug. 2026
  • This is where the creation of the aforementioned fictional Barrow’s Green came about, which eventually came to life in the form of The Six Bells Inn.
    — Condé Nast, Condé Nast Traveler, 26 Aug. 2026
Definition of fictional
Verb
  • The Dreamers have dreamed big, raised private capital and put together a stadium proposal.
    — Mike Bianchi, The Orlando Sentinel, 14 Aug. 2026
  • In March, as the criminal investigation dragged on and many wondered if Burke would ever face charges, Jane, the girl who frequently messaged with Burke before Rivas Hernandez, dreamt about him on his birthday.
    — Nancy Dillon, Rolling Stone, 5 Aug. 2026
Definition of dreamed
Verb
  • Yields dipped and then rebounded in the wake of the Treasury buyback move, a signal that bond investors believed Bessent's moves were inadequate.
    — Alex Harring, CNBC, 25 Aug. 2026
  • Schmitt believed that the respective hegemons of the Grossräume should dominate coercively if necessary.
    — Leonard A. Schuette, Foreign Affairs, 25 Aug. 2026
Definition of believed
Verb
  • At the extreme upper end, the study found that a maximum possible prevalence of CTE — if researchers assumed that every former football player had CTE except for the 20 whose brains had definitively been cleared of a diagnosis — was around 97%.
    — Becky Sullivan, NPR, 25 Aug. 2026
  • Taylor has quickly assumed a leadership role, with her coach using her as an example of expectations.
    — Edgar Thompson, The Orlando Sentinel, 24 Aug. 2026
Definition of assumed

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Cite this Entry

“Imagined.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/imagined. Accessed 28 Aug. 2026.

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