Other forms: imagined, imagining, imagines
To imagine something is to make a picture of it in your head. Close your eyes and imagine a beach. Stand in the kitchen and imagine the wall gone and the light coming through from the garden.
It also softens a guess into a polite assumption: I imagine she is still asleep, I imagine that went down badly. A third use covers believing something that is not there, so if you hear footsteps in an empty house you are imagining things. Said on its own, Imagine! is a small burst of surprise. Follow it with -ing rather than to: imagine living there, imagine having to explain that. The noun is imagination, and keep the two adjectives apart, because imaginary means not real while imaginative means full of ideas.
1verbimagineTo form a picture or idea of something in your mind.
“Imagine a room with no windows and one door.”
synonyms: picture, envisage
2verbsupposeTo suppose that something is probably the case.
“I imagine she has already heard the news.”
3verbwronglyTo wrongly believe that something is real or happening.
“He imagined he heard a key in the lock, but the hall was empty.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Imagine came through Middle English ymagynen and Middle French imaginer from Latin imāginor, which was built on imāgō, a copy, a likeness, an image. To imagine is literally to make an image, and the picture in the word is the picture in your head.
Latin
imāginor
Middle French
imaginer
Middle English
ymagynen
English, today
imagine
Built from
From Middle English ymagynen, from Middle French imaginer, from Latin imāginor, from imāginem, the accusative singular of imāgō (“a copy, likeness, image”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA