surreal
Definition
- Adjective:
- Resembling a dream; having an unreal, fantastic, or strange quality. This meaning describes something that feels disconnected from reality, similar to the illogical and shifting nature of dreams.
- Characterized by fantastic, bizarre, or incongruous imagery and combinations. This meaning is specific to the artistic and literary movement of Surrealism, which seeks to express the subconscious mind.
Usage Examples
- Adjective:
- Waking up in a foreign city felt surreal. (The experience had an unreal, dreamlike quality.)
- The surreal landscape of the salt flats stretched to the horizon. (The landscape appeared strange and fantastical.)
- The artist is known for his surreal paintings featuring melting clocks. (The paintings contain bizarre, dream-inspired imagery.)
Advanced Usage
- "surreal experience/moment": A common collocation to describe a situation that feels incredibly strange or unbelievable.
- Winning the award was a surreal experience.
- Used to describe a situation that is so bizarre or unexpected it feels unreal.
- The entire meeting had a surreal quality, as if no one was listening to each other.
Variants and Related Words
- Surrealism (n): A 20th-century artistic and literary movement that sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, often through irrational juxtapositions.
- Salvador Dalí was a famous painter in the Surrealism movement.
- Surrealist (n/adj): (A person) relating to or characteristic of Surrealism.
- He is a surrealist filmmaker.
- Surreally (adv): In a surreal manner.
- The events unfolded surreally.
Synonyms
- Dreamlike: Having the qualities of a dream.
- Unreal: Lacking in reality or substance.
- Fantastic: Extraordinarily good or attractive; also, conceived by unrestrained imagination.
- Bizarre: Very strange or unusual.
- Phantasmagoric: Having a fantastic or deceptive appearance, as in a dream.
Related Idioms & Phrases
- Like something out of a dream: Similar in meaning to "surreal," emphasizing an unbelievable or fantastical quality.
- The garden at night was like something out of a dream.
Adjective
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resembling a dream
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night invested the lake with a dreamlike quality
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as irrational and surreal as a dream
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characterized by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtapositions
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a great concourse of phantasmagoric shadows--J.C.Powys
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the incongruous imagery in surreal art and literature
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