unreal

[ uhn-ree-uhl, -reel ]

adjective

1. not real reis or actual.
2. imaginary; fanciful; illusory; delusory; fantastic.
3. lacking in truth; not genuine; false; artificial:

   unreal propaganda serving as news.

unreal

/ ʌnˈrɪəl /

adjective

1. imaginary or fanciful or seemingly so

   an unreal situation

2. having no actual existence or substance
3. insincere or artificial

Derived Forms

• unˈreally, adverb

Other Words From

• un·real·ly adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of unreal¹

First recorded in 1595–1605; un- ¹ + real ¹

Example Sentences

“The composure he’s managed to maintain is unreal,” Pat Cavlin, a meteorologist in Florida, marveled on Twitter.

From Washington Post

It was that easy, as spectacular and unreal as Reagan’s Star Wars defense plan to shoot down Soviet missiles from spaceships.

From Freakonomics

There, brilliant and unreal, the city had its life, as Brownsville was ours.

From Washington Post

Instead, we can think about the explosion of attempted 3-pointers, Harden’s unreal efficiency and that both reshaped how every team approaches offense.

From FiveThirtyEight

She describes her first efforts at awareness in terms of “fleeting memories, if, indeed, they be memories, it all seems very unreal.”

From Nautilus

The busy hostile world outside is mystifying and a little unreal.

From The Daily Beast

Everything seems a little intense, vivid, almost unreal, but he seems not to notice.

From The Daily Beast

Stiff cliched characters, unreal situations, and a bit too much autobiography.

From The Daily Beast

This would, Summerscale points out, “render the moment of their intimacy at once real and unreal, a fact and a fiction.”

From The Daily Beast

He put together an unreal show...every performer dedicated his or her music to Whitney.

From The Daily Beast

Even as I looked I saw the features of a human countenance—and yet not human either, so spectral was it, so unreal and strange.

From Project Gutenberg

Her own like experiences seemed far away, unreal, and only half remembered.

From Project Gutenberg

It was all unreal, as unreal as the baseless fabric of a dream; and yet it was real, wondrously real.

From Project Gutenberg

The way seemed perfectly plain, and yet everything seemed intangible, unreal.

From Project Gutenberg

Hope had gone, dreams were unreal and vanishing as the mist that crawled along the bog-pools at night.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• dreamlike
• false
• fanciful
• hallucinatory
• illusory
• immaterial
• unbelievable