I'm confused about the words 'real', 'imaginary', 'virtual', and 'nominal'
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Today, I have a few questions about English words.
Yesterday, one of my Japanese friends insisted that 'real' is not an antonym of 'imaginary'.
He said 'real' can be an antonym of 'imaginary' only in old scientific documents or monographs.
He also said that 'real' can mean 'imaginary' in a way.
He said, "For example, when photographers say 'photo real' or 'super real', with the word 'real', they mean their images that are actually just in their minds. In this case, 'real' does not actually means 'fact' but more 'real' feeling than 'fact' which they feel about photos. That's why."
However, I don't think so.
I think 'real' can be an antonym of 'imaginary' in common use.
My dictionary says that 'real' (as an adjective) has following meanings:
1, NOT ARTIFICIAL, something that is real is actually what it seems to be and not false, artificial or pretended
2. NOT IMAGINARY, actually existing and not just imagined
In the first case, antonyms of 'real' are 'fake', 'artificial', and so forth.
In the second case, I think 'imaginary' can be an antonym of 'real'.
How do you think about it?
Would you tell me which one is correct?
And also, I have two more questions:
- Can 'virtual' be an antonym of 'real'?
(If so, I’ll be a little bit confused about the phrase 'virtual reality'. Does the phrase have two words which have opposite meanings? Can it make sense?)
- Can 'nominal' be an antonym of 'virtual'?
Yesterday, one of my Japanese friends insisted that 'real' is not an antonym of 'imaginary'.
He said 'real' can be an antonym of 'imaginary' only in old scientific documents or monographs.
He also said that 'real' can mean 'imaginary' in a way.
He said, "For example, when photographers say 'photo real' or 'super real', with the word 'real', they mean their images that are actually just in their minds. In this case, 'real' does not actually means 'fact' but more 'real' feeling than 'fact' which they feel about photos. That's why."
However, I don't think so.
I think 'real' can be an antonym of 'imaginary' in common use.
My dictionary says that 'real' (as an adjective) has following meanings:
1, NOT ARTIFICIAL, something that is real is actually what it seems to be and not false, artificial or pretended
2. NOT IMAGINARY, actually existing and not just imagined
In the first case, antonyms of 'real' are 'fake', 'artificial', and so forth.
In the second case, I think 'imaginary' can be an antonym of 'real'.
How do you think about it?
Would you tell me which one is correct?
And also, I have two more questions:
- Can 'virtual' be an antonym of 'real'?
(If so, I’ll be a little bit confused about the phrase 'virtual reality'. Does the phrase have two words which have opposite meanings? Can it make sense?)
- Can 'nominal' be an antonym of 'virtual'?
I'm confused about the words 'real', 'imaginary', 'virtual', and 'nominal' (In America, we put punctuation inside of quote marks: the words 'real,' 'imaginary,'... I personally prefer putting commas outside of quotes, and in the UK this is more common, I believe, but just be aware that in America, this is strange)
He said 'real' can be is only an antonym of 'imaginary' only in old scientific documents or monographs.
In this case, 'real' does not actually means 'fact' but more 'real' feeling than 'fact', which is how they feel about photos.
I think 'real' can be is an antonym of 'imaginary' in common use.
How What do you think about it?
"Unicorns are real."
"Unicorns are imaginary."
^ these sentences are opposites
"virtual" is a bit tougher. We usually use "virtual" to mean artificial, but it doesn't mean the same thing as "imaginary". Also, we might say that two things are "virtually the same", which means "almost the same". As far as "virtual reality", this means "constructed reality". Basically, it's a "reality" that isn't the real reality. It's kind of hard to explain, but if you picture a world that seems like the real world, but isn't, that's virtual reality. We usually use "virtual reality" to refer to technology that immerse your senses in an artificial world.
I know that it's kind of hard to understand, but you asked a very tough question :).
I'll study more about this.