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Imaginary vs Unfounded - What's the difference?

imaginary | unfounded | Related terms |

Imaginary is a related term of unfounded.


As adjectives the difference between imaginary and unfounded

is that imaginary is existing only in the imagination while unfounded is having no strong foundation; not based on solid reasons or facts.

As a noun imaginary

is imagination; fancy.

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.
  • unfounded

    English

    Adjective

    (-)
  • Having no strong foundation; not based on solid reasons or facts.
  • Not having been founded or instituted.
  • * 1980 , Helen Louise Gardner, ?John Carey, English Renaissance studies (page 268)
  • Even the great world as yet undiscovered, the cities as yet unfounded , and the history as yet unwritten, are lost: fallen from the beginning.

    Synonyms

    * (not based on solid reasons or facts) baseless, groundless, ungrounded