imaginary friend
imaginary friend noun: a nonexistent person, the subject of a friendship or other interpersonal relationship taking place in the imagination rather than in physical reality.
Noun
imaginary friend (plural imaginary friends)
- A nonexistent person, the subject of a friendship or other interpersonal relationship taking place in the imagination rather than in physical reality.
- A deity or higher power, particularly the Abrahamic God.
- Sometimes the Christians talk to their imaginary friend, Jesus, when they are alone.1988, Mary E. Carreiro, Modern Religion & The Destruction of Spiritual Capacity, page 78
- But what was God doing while Katrina laid waste to their city? Surely He heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. […] These poor people died talking to an imaginary friend.2008, Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation, page 52
Forms of imaginary friend
| plural | imaginary friends |
|---|
Questions about imaginary friend
- What does imaginary friend mean?
- Imaginary friend means a nonexistent person, the subject of a friendship or other interpersonal relationship taking place in the imagination rather than in physical reality.
- What part of speech is imaginary friend?
- Imaginary friend is a noun.
- What is the plural of imaginary friend?
- The plural of imaginary friend is imaginary friends.
Words near imaginary friend in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: imaginary friend (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-imaginary friend.wav.
Cite this entry: “imaginary friend.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/imaginary_friend. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.