imagined


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i·mag·ine

 (ĭ-măj′ĭn)
v. i·mag·ined, i·mag·in·ing, i·mag·ines
v.tr.
1. To form a mental picture or image of: imagined a better life abroad.
2. To think or suppose; conjecture: I imagine you're right.
3. To have a notion of or about without adequate foundation; fancy or believe: She imagines herself to be a true artist.
v.intr.
1. To employ the imagination.
2. To have a belief or make a guess.

[Middle English imaginen, from Old French imaginer, from Latin imāginārī, from imāgō, imāgin-, image; see aim- in Indo-European roots.]

i·mag′in·er n.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
References in classic literature ?
But I just went to work and imagined that I had on the most beautiful pale blue silk dress--because when you ARE imagining you might as well imagine something worth while--and a big hat all flowers and nodding plumes, and a gold watch, and kid gloves and boots.
Have you ever imagined what it must feel like to be divinely beautiful?"
No more unpromising undertaking could be imagined. The very material for the task seemed wanting.
You imagined him clammily cold to the touch, like a snake.
Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other;,no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice.
She wondered as she regarded some of the grizzled women in the room, mere mechanical contrivances sewing seams and grinding out, with heads bended over their work, tales of imagined or real girlhood happiness, past drunks, the baby at home, and unpaid wages.
The doctor went directly to London, where he died soon after of a broken heart; a distemper which kills many more than is generally imagined, and would have a fair title to a place in the bill of mortality, did it not differ in one instance from all other diseases--viz., that no physician can cure it.
As I was picking up a skin that lay upon the ground, I was stung by a serpent that left his sting in my finger; I at least picked an extraneous substance about the bigness of a hair out of the wound, which I imagined was the sting.
Besides, I had ideas of many sensible and corporeal things; for although I might suppose that I was dreaming, and that all which I saw or imagined was false, I could not, nevertheless, deny that the ideas were in reality in my thoughts.
He imagined secluded spots where he could fall and be unmolested.
He imagined men such as he had himself been a fortnight ago, and he addressed an edifying exhortation to them.
How attractive this prospect must have been to the Frail Sex may readily be imagined. They anticipated with delight the confusion that would ensue.