IMAGINATIVE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does imaginative mean? 

• IMAGINATIVE (adjective)
  The adjective IMAGINATIVE has 1 sense:

1. (used of persons or artifacts) marked by independence and creativity in thought or action

  Familiarity information: IMAGINATIVE used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• IMAGINATIVE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

(used of persons or artifacts) marked by independence and creativity in thought or action

Synonyms:

imaginative; inventive

Context example:

inventive ceramics

Similar:

creative; originative (having the ability or power to create)

Derivation:

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

imagine (form a mental image of something that is not present or that is not the case)

 Context examples 

Neptune will help you come up with imaginative ideas for your latest assignment.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

I have often attributed my attachment to, my passionate enthusiasm for, the dangerous mysteries of ocean to that production of the most imaginative of modern poets.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

To a man possessed of the higher imaginative powers, the objection to legal studies is the amount of detail which they involve.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I may have said somewhere in this chronicle that I am too imaginative to be a really courageous man, but that I have an overpowering fear of seeming afraid.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

To him they were frankly imaginative and fantastic, though invested with all the glamour of the real, wherein lay their power.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Speculations have included the idea that the star swallowed a planet that it is unstable, and a more imaginative theory involves a giant contraption or megastructure built by an advanced civilization, which could be harvesting energy from the star and causing its brightness to decrease.

(Mysterious Dimming of Tabby's Star May Be Caused by Dust, NASA)

She put them in his buttonhole as a peace offering, and he stood a minute looking down at them with a curious expression, for in the Italian part of his nature there was a touch of superstition, and he was just then in that state of half-sweet, half-bitter melancholy, when imaginative young men find significance in trifles and food for romance everywhere.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool; if so my stay may be very interesting.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

You will be one of the few signs this month that will be able to voice your imaginative thoughts and be lauded for them.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

When I read to Agnes what I wrote; when I saw her listening face; moved her to smiles or tears; and heard her cordial voice so earnest on the shadowy events of that imaginative world in which I lived; I thought what a fate mine might have been—but only thought so, as I had thought after I was married to Dora, what I could have wished my wife to be.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)