Meaning & use

surreal

adjective·Academic

Having a strange, dreamlike quality that feels unreal or bizarre.

See it in a sentence

Winning the award felt surreal, like something happening to someone else.

The artist's surreal paintings combined ordinary objects in impossible, dreamlike ways.

A note on using this word

Surreal originates from the Surrealism art movement, which depicted irrational, dream-inspired imagery, and is now used for any strange or hard-to-believe experience.

Words with a similar meaning

dreamlikebizarre

Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.

Words with an opposite meaning

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