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Chimerical vs Imaginary - What's the difference?

chimerical | imaginary | Synonyms |

Chimerical is a synonym of imaginary.


As adjectives the difference between chimerical and imaginary

is that chimerical is of or pertaining to a chimera while imaginary is existing only in the imagination.

As a noun imaginary is

imagination; fancy.

chimerical

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Of or pertaining to a chimera.
  • Being a figment of the imagination; fantastic (in the archaic sense).
  • * 1877 ,
    • "Yes; I have a turn both for observation and for deduction. The theories which I have expressed there, and which appear to you to be so chimerical , are really extremely practical—so practical that I depend upon them for my bread and cheese."
    a chimerical goal
  • Inherently fantastic; wildly fanciful.
  • Resulting from the expression of two or more genes that originally coded for separate proteins.

    • Derived terms

    * chimerically

    imaginary

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • existing only in the imagination
  • * Addison
    • Wilt thou add to all the griefs I suffer / Imaginary ills and fancied tortures?
  • (mathematics) of a number, having no real part; that part of a complex number which is a multiple of the square root of -1.

    • Derived terms

    * imaginarily * imaginariness

    Noun

    (imaginaries)
  • Imagination; fancy.
  • * 2002 , , The Great Nation , Penguin 2003, p. 324:
    • By then too Mozart's opera, from Da Ponte's libretto, had made Figaro a stock character in the European imaginary and set the whole Continent whistling Mozartian airs and chuckling at Figaresque humour.
  • (mathematics) An imaginary quantity.

    • External links

    * (Imaginary number)