imaginary

Their approaches, wrote the 19th-century historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, differ as “a portrait differs from the representation of an imaginary scene.”

With great theatricality, she dropped the imaginary correspondence on the ground.

A bemused Miss Mortimer opened her office door to find the Incorrigibles taking mock bows and curtsies before an imaginary audience, as if they had just concluded a successful opening night on the West End.

Penelope’s scalp was already sweaty beneath her pith helmet, and she found herself shooing away imaginary gnats.

His flights of fancy— malevolent music, undead scholars, imaginary brothers, a cult led by a guru with 93 Ferraris in an “experimental township” called the Moon — are more controlled and add subtle strokes of color.