ADJ.

great | active, creative, fertile, vivid | fevered, overactive, overheated

It's just a product of your fevered imagination!

| collective, popular, public

a popular hero who inspired the collective imagination

| visual

I was no good at art?I have a very poor visual imagination.

| historical, literary

It requires a strong effort of historical imagination to understand the Roman attitude to death.

| human

the powers of the human imagination

VERB + IMAGINATION

have | show | lack

Today's pop music lacks imagination.

| require, take

It does not take great imagination to guess what happened next.

| use

I haven't got a picture of this so you'll just have to use your imagination.

| capture, captivate, catch, excite, fire, inspire, seize, stimulate, stir

Victorian writers fired the popular imagination with their tales of adventure.

| grip, hold

Dinosaurs caught and have held the imagination of us all because they seem like dragons.

| stretch, tax | defy

The scale of the disaster defied imagination (= was greater than you could imagine).

| leave sth to

As for their reaction, I'll leave that to your imagination!

IMAGINATION + VERB

conjure sth up

His imagination conjured up a vision of the normal family life he had never had.

| run away with you, run riot/wild

PREP.

beyond (your) ~

misery that is beyond most people's imagination

| in the/your ~

Nobody hates you?it's all in your imagination!

| with/without ~

He was totally without imagination.

PHRASES

a lack of imagination, a figment/product of sb's imagination

The figure vanished as silently as if it had simply been a figment of her imagination.

| not by any/by no stretch of the imagination

Not by any stretch of the imagination could she be called beautiful (= she was definitely not beautiful in any way)

.

| only your imagination

Is it only my imagination or have you lost weight?

| with a little imagination

With a little imagination you can create a delicious meal from yesterday's leftovers.