IMAGINARY CREATURE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does imaginary creature mean? 

• IMAGINARY CREATURE (noun)
  The noun IMAGINARY CREATURE has 1 sense:

1. a creature of the imagination; a person that exists only in legends or myths or fiction

  Familiarity information: IMAGINARY CREATURE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• IMAGINARY CREATURE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A creature of the imagination; a person that exists only in legends or myths or fiction

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

imaginary being; imaginary creature

Hypernyms ("imaginary creature" is a kind of...):

imagination; imaginativeness; vision (the formation of a mental image of something that is not perceived as real and is not present to the senses)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "imaginary creature"):

mythical being (an imaginary being of myth or fable)

unicorn (an imaginary creature represented as a white horse with a long horn growing from its forehead)

sylph (an elemental being believed to inhabit the air)

psychopomp (a conductor of souls to the afterworld)

character; fictional character; fictitious character (an imaginary person represented in a work of fiction (play or film or story))

witch (a being (usually female) imagined to have special powers derived from the devil)

monster (an imaginary creature usually having various human and animal parts)

Cadmus ((Greek mythology) the brother of Europa and traditional founder of Thebes in Boeotia)

merman (half man and half fish; lives in the sea)

mermaid (half woman and half fish; lives in the sea)

hobbit (an imaginary being similar to a person but smaller and with hairy feet; invented by J.R.R. Tolkien)

giant (an imaginary figure of superhuman size and strength; appears in folklore and fairy tales)

hypothetical creature (a creature that has not been observed but is hypothesized to exist)

Instance hyponyms:

Martian (imaginary people who live on the planet Mars)

Humpty Dumpty (an egg-shaped character in a nursery rhyme who fell off a wall and could not be put back together again (late 17th century))

Jack Frost (a personification of frost or winter weather)

Mammon ((New Testament) a personification of wealth and avarice as an evil spirit)

Maxwell's demon (an imaginary creature that controls a small hole in a partition that divides a chamber filled with gas into two parts and allows fast molecules to move in one direction and slow molecules to move in the other direction through the hole; this would result in one part of the container becoming warmer and the other cooler, thus decreasing entropy and violating the second law of thermodynamics)

Gargantua (a voracious giant in Francois Rabelais' book of the same name)

Father Christmas; Kriss Kringle; Saint Nicholas; Saint Nick; Santa; Santa Claus; St. Nick (the legendary patron saint of children; an imaginary being who is thought to bring presents to children at Christmas)

Death (the personification of death)

Tom Thumb (an imaginary hero of English folklore who was no taller than his father's thumb)