Verb

To take control of; to seize by force or stratagem.

to capture an enemy, a vessel, or a criminal

* 2014 , Ian Black, " Courts kept busy as Jordan works to crush support for Isis", The Guardian , 27 November 2014:

Arrests and prosecutions intensified after Isis captured Mosul in June, but the groundwork had been laid by an earlier amendment to Jordan’s anti-terrorism law. It is estimated that 2,000 Jordanians have fought and 250 of them have died in Syria – making them the third largest Arab contingent in Isis after Saudi Arabians and Tunisians.

To store (as in sounds or image) for later revisitation.

She captured the sounds of a subway station on tape.

She captured the details of the fresco in a series of photographs.

To reproduce convincingly.

His film adaptation captured the spirit of the original work.

In her latest masterpiece, she captured the essence of Venice.

To remove or take control of an opponent’s piece in a game (e.g., chess, go, checkers).

My pawn was captured .

He captured his opponent’s queen on the 15th move.

* 1954 , Fred Reinfeld, How to Be a Winner at Chess , page 63, Hanover House (Garden City, NY)

How deeply ingrained capturing is in the mind of a chess master can be seen from this story.

Verb

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

* Shakespeare

In the night, imagining some fear, / How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-14, author=(Jonathan Freedland)

, volume=189, issue=1, page=18, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Obama's once hip brand is now tainted , passage=Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined . Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.}}

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

To assume.

To conjecture or guess.

To use one's imagination.

(obsolete) To contrive in purpose; to scheme; to devise.

* Bible, Psalms lxii. 3

How long will ye imagine mischief against a man?