surreal
- 01 B2 Upper Intermediate
adj.very strange or unusual, like something you would see in a dream.
adj.resembling a dream in its bizarre, illogical, or fantastic quality; often involves the juxtaposition of incongruous elements.
Simple“Standing in the middle of the empty stadium felt completely surreal.”
In context“The experience of walking through the abandoned city was utterly surreal, as if we had stepped directly into a painting by Salvador Dalí.”
- 02 C2 Proficiency
n.a special kind of number used in advanced mathematics.
n.an element of a field that includes all real numbers as well as infinite and infinitesimal numbers.
Simple“The professor explained how surreal numbers can represent games.”
In context“In combinatorial game theory, surreals provide a powerful framework for evaluating the values of various positions in a game.”
UsageUsually used in the plural form 'surreals' or as the compound 'surreal number'.
“And that’s when I was like, this is totally sci-fi.” The sight was so surreal, Glover says, that almost nothing more would have surprised him.”
A back-formation from surrealism, equivalent to sur- + real.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.