IMAGINATIVE, IMAGINABLE, IMAGINARY

INTRODUCTORY MATERIAL

Read and translate the following sentences paying special attention to the words in bold type.

1. She brought imaginative insight to this tale of despair and outrage after a broken love affair. 2. Not for a moment did he doubt that this impression of his was objective, it was no imaginative phantom of his invention that made itself so real. 3. Perhaps there may not have been blood in the courtyard. Perhaps it is only what an imaginative Irish porter imagined. 4. But the passionately intense life of children, that imaginative existence which is to them the whole purpose and vital interest of their days is not a game. It seems a game to the grown-up people around them. 5. It was the face of the inspired shepherds of the Hebraic legends, living close to nature, dwellers in the wilderness, solitary, imaginative, having strange delusions, gifted with strange powers. 6. He had the greatest difficulty imaginable in his attempts to do it. 7. He knew only that he was hungry, and through his restless sleep he dreamed of feasts and banquets and of food served and spread in all imaginable ways. He awoke chilled and sick.8. Noteworthy here is Oxbridge, often imagined to be a modern coinage and sometimes ascribed to H. G. Wells, but in reality it comes in the first place from the pen of Thackeray, who sent his hero Pendennis to that imaginary seat of learning. 9. In order to save trouble I changed Hong Kong to an imaginary colony of Tching-Yen. 10. «That is the end of the story. Or is it?» Logically one might have expected to find, in the imaginary example just given, a form «Or isn’t it?»

EXPLANATORY NOTES

Imaginative adj. Having, using, or showing imagination; having creative or productive talent; able to imagine or fond of imagining; resulting from imagination, e.g. an ~ idea, an ~ poet.

Imaginable adj. That can be imagined, e.g. the only way ~, we had the greatest difficulty ~ getting here in time. Antonym: unimaginable, adj.

Imaginary adj. Existing only in the mind; fanciful, unreal, e.g. an ~ object, an ~ conversation.

Imaginative, imaginable and imaginary are not synonymous adjectives but they are sometimes confused because of the identity of the root word. Imaginative (одаренный богатым воображением; образный, художественный) applies to that which is the product of the imagination or has a character indicating the exercise or the power of imagination, e.g. imaginative writings are often distinguished from historical, argumentative, and similar types of writing; an imaginative poet is one whose imagination heightens a thing or brings out its fine and almost imperceptible essence. Imaginable (вообразимый, мыслимый) often means little more than conceivable. Imaginary (воображаемый, мнимый, нереальный) applies to that which is fictitious, unreal, and purely the product of an active or, especially, an excited imagination.