Some (=20?) years ago American and other anglo-saxon (the French word for anyone writing in English!) scholars infected by French theories and academic jargon started using the word "imaginary" as a noun, as in "the social imaginary" of 19th-century reformers.

Not one of my dictionaries gives a definition of "imaginary" as a noun, but certain kinds of academic writers (and translators) seem to be in love with the neologism, if indeed neolgism it is. My guess is that it could justly be translated as "imagination," with no loss of meaning and less injury to the mother tongue.

Anyone know when this import first crossed the Pas de Calais?

Apologies if this is the wrong forum. None of the others seemed to fit this particular query.

Richard Bienvenu
Boone County, MO

There is no doubt that any English adjective can serve as a noun to give the meaning  "those things which are… / those persons who are [insert adjective of your choice]"  ("The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly"), and in this sense you could have "imaginary" as a noun: "The real and the imaginery are intermingled in this story".

Nevertheless, I agree with you that qualifying such a noun with an adjective is a step too far for English. L’imaginaire = That which is imagined. L’imaginaire social = That which is imagined by a whole society. That construction works fine in French, but I get a very queasy feeling when I read "The social imaginery" in an English text. It’s a direct calque which doesn’t work except—as you imply—for those already imbued in the jargon. The general reader stumbles over it and searches for the missing words or tries to work out what went wrong in the typesetting.

The English use of adjective as noun is mirrored in Spanish by "lo + adjective": e.g. the ideal (solution) = lo ideal, etc, so out of curiosity I did a search for "imaginario social". Aaagh! The Gallicism has not only crossed the Pas de Calais / Straits of Dover but also made its way through the Pass of Roncesvalles. El imaginario social is rife in Spanish-language sociological texts too! Can any native speakers of Spanish
confirm that that sounds as wrong as "the social imaginary"?

Coemgenus  

I’ve never come across this, as far as I recall. If I had, I would have "corrected" it to imagery, possibly therby missing the point.

Coemgenus:

There is no doubt that any English adjective can serve as a noun to give the meaning  "those things which are… / those persons who are [insert adjective of your choice]"  ("The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly"), and in this sense you could have "imaginary" as a noun: "The real and the imaginery are intermingled in this story".
Nevertheless, I agree with you that qualifying such a noun with an adjective is a step too far for English.

I must agree with Coemgenus here (and partially with Bienvenue that this phrase is at best awkward).

The imaginary is unreal!

But not:

The social imaginary is unreal.*

Don’t like it!

Sitran

Ah, I think I get it.  L’imaginaire social roughly translates to the social unconcious—‘unconcious’ in the Freudian sense, I guess.

-Tim

Yes, Tim, I think that’s about it. I think it refers to the subconscious social feelings of the masses or something like that, at least that’s what first comes to mind when seeing the French expression.

BTW, wouldn’t some people consider ‘hideous’ and ‘French’ to be a bit of a pleonasm?

Spiff:

BTW, wouldn’t some people consider ‘hideous’ and ‘French’ to be a bit of a pleonasm?

Sitran hides his smile under a mask of bitter and stern self-reproach!

Pleonasms or Tautological Redundancies

Sitran

[quote author=KatyBr link=board=idiom;num=1068563668;start=0#8 date=11/13/03 at 20:44:01]in my home the big bad pleonasm is 3AM, in the morning…

*Hangs head in shame*

I said that exact phrase just a few hours ago.

~Silver
(Who corrected herself while speaking to others, but they didn’t realize what I was correcting until they thought about it for a few moments.  :-[)

This seemed simple at first…...

Imaginary is to imagine as visionary is to vision.

But wait…..

imagine is a verb and vision is a noun.

One side of my brain is able to accept imaginary as a noun but the other side wants to make it an adjective.  So there is a war going on inside my head.

So perhaps visionary should be changed to ENvisionary so that both sides make peace.

English, the language that makes up the rules "on the fly."

~Kai

All languages do. That’s what makes them human.