unreal
Americanadjective
-
not real or actual.
-
imaginary; fanciful; illusory; delusory; fantastic.
-
lacking in truth; not genuine; false; artificial.
unreal propaganda serving as news.
adjective
-
imaginary or fanciful or seemingly so
an unreal situation
-
having no actual existence or substance
-
insincere or artificial
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of unreal
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
"It seems unreal -- how is it possible that rather than a single pathway we see all these effects happening simultaneously and only in tumors and not in healthy tissues?"
From Science Daily ● Jul. 9, 2026
Charlie Paddock, 27, from south London, also said she "nearly fainted twice and the hot flushes were unreal", while Jess Allingham, 26, said she was "absolutely exhausted, more than normal", and had "total brain fog".
From BBC ● Jul. 8, 2026
And L.A., a lot of the time, there’s things that happen here that are crazy, that feel almost unreal, but they are real.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 18, 2026
Mr. Ridgway combines an exact sense of setting—one could take a walking tour of the streets he names—with the spare, unreal atmosphere of an allegory.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 11, 2026
She did not know that things had come to this; in Nsukka, life was insular and the news was unreal, functioning only as fodder for the evening talk, for Odenigbo’s rants and impassioned articles.
From "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
