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Mawson, C.O.S., ed. (1870–1938). Roget’s International Thesaurus. 1922.

Class IV. Words Relating to the Intellectual Faculties
Division (I) Formation of Ideas
Section VII. Creative Thought

515. Imagination.

   NOUN:IMAGINATION, originality, invention; fancy; inspiration; verve.
  warm -, heated -, excited -, sanguine -, ardent -, fiery -, boiling -, wild -, bold -, daring -, playful -, lively -, fertile- -imagination, – fancy.
  “mind’s eye” [Hamlet]; “the mind’s internal heaven” [Wordsworth]; “such stuff as dreams are made on” [Tempest].
  IDEALITY, idealism; romanticism, utopianism, castle-building; dreaming; frenzy or phrensy, ecstasy; calenture (delirium) [See Insanity]; reverie or revery, brown study, pipe dream, daydream, trance; somnambulism.
  conception, Vorstellung [Ger.], excogitation, “a fine frenzy” [M. N. D.]; cloudland, dreamland; flight -, fumes- of fancy; “thick-coming fancies” [Macbeth]; creation -, coinage- of the brain; imagery; word painting.
  FANTASY, conceit, figment, myth, dream, vision, shadow, chimera; phantasm, phantasy, fancy; maggot, whim, whimwham, whimsey or whimsy, vagary, rhapsody, romance, gest or geste, extravaganza; “air-drawn dagger” [Macbeth], bugbear, nightmare; flying Dutchman, great sea serpent, man in the moon, castle in the air, castle in Spain, château en Espagne [F.], pleasure dome of Kubla Khan, Utopia; Heavenly City, New Jerusalem; Atlantis, Happy Valley [Johnson], millennium, fairyland; land of Prester John, kingdom of Micomicon; Estotiland or Estotilandia [Milton]; Laputa; Cockagne, Lubberland; Arabian nights; le pot au lait [F.]; pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow; dream of Alnaschar (hope) [See Hope]; golden dream.
  CREATIVE WORKS] work of fiction (novel) [See Description]; poetry [See Poetry]; play, tragedy, comedy (drama) [See The Drama]; sonata (music) [See Music].
  ILLUSION (error) [See Error]; phantom (fallacy of vision) [See Dim-sightedness]; Fata Morgana [L.] (ignis fatuus) [See Luminary]; vapor (cloud) [See Bubble, Cloud]; stretch of the imagination (exaggeration) [See Exaggeration]; mythogenesis.
  IDEALIST, romanticist, visionary; mopus [slang], romancer, daydreamer, dreamer; somnambulist; rhapsodist (fanatic) [See Madman]; castle-builder, fanciful projector; “sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child” [Milton].
   VERB:IMAGINE, fancy, conceive; idealize, realize; dream, – of; “gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name” [M. N. D.].
  set one’s wits to work; strain -, crack- one’s invention; rack -, ransack -, cudgel- one’s brains; excogitate.
  give -play, – the reins, – a loose [obs.]- to the- -imagination, – fancy; tilt at wind-mills; indulge in reverie.
  conjure up a vision; fancy -, represent -, picture -, figure- to oneself; vorstellen [Ger.]; “see visions and dream dreams” [Bible].
  float in the mind; suggest itself (thought) [See Thought].
  CREATE, originate, devise, invent, make up, coin, fabricate; improvise, strike out something new.
   ADJECTIVE:IMAGINED &c. v.; ben trovato [It.]; air-drawn, air-built.
  IMAGINATIVE; imagining &c. v.; original, inventive, creative, fertile, productive, ingenious.
  EXTRAVAGANT, romantic, high-flown, flighty, preposterous; rhapsodic or rhapsodical; fanatic, enthusiastic, Utopian, Quixotic.
  IDEAL, unreal; in the clouds, in nubibus [L.]; unsubstantial [See Unsubstantiality]; illusory (fallacious) [See Error]; fictitious, theoretical, hypothetical.
  fanciful; fabulous, legendary, mythic or mythical, mythological, chimerical; imaginary, visionary; dream-beset, dream-ridden, dreamy, entranced, notional, fancy, fantastical, high-fantastical, fantasied, maggoty, made of empty air, vaporous, whimsical; fairy, fairylike.
   QUOTATIONS:
  1. A change came o’er the spirit of my dream.—Byron
  2. Ægri somnia vana; delphinum appingit sylvis in fluctibus aprum.—Horace
  3. Your old men shall dream dreams; your young men shall see visions.—Bible
  4. Fancy light from fancy caught.—Tennyson
  5. Imagination rules the world.—Napoleon
  6. L’imagination gallope, le jugement ne va que le pas.
  7. Musæo contingens cuncta lepore.—Lucretius
  8. He is a dreamer; let us leave him: pass.—Julius Cæsar
  9. For he on honey-dew hath fed And drunk the milk of Paradise.—Coleridge
  10. Forms more real than living man, Nurslings of immortality.—Shelley
  11. Tous songes sont mensonges.
  12. Wahrheit und Dichtung.
  13. Magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faëry lands forlorn.—Keats
  14. O sweet Fancy! let her loose.—Keats
  15. The centre of every man’s existence is a dream.—Chesterton
  16. This is visionary mania.—Galsworthy