surreal

comparative more surreal · superlative most surreal

1. Resembling a dream: fantastic and incongruous.

   a surreal experience

   5 more examples

   surreal picture/sound/art

   The movie had a dreamlike, surreal atmosphere.

   Three weeks after the second Time meltdown cover, one day after Leonard Cohen died, Donald Trump pulled off one of the greatest upsets in American political history. That’s when 2016 went from being a bad dream to full-on waking nightmare, one that’s just gotten worse and worse, and more and more surreal.

   2016 December 19, Dave Bry, “'Surreal' is Merriam-Webster's word of the year. Sounds about right”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

   Incomprehensible violence and the tragedy that follows, the implication goes, inject a surreal dimension into existence. The conspiracy theories and social upheavals spawned by our own world’s mass departures—and, Lindelof has noted, electoral surprises—suggest that the strangeness of The Leftovers is mostly one of degree, not kind.

   2017 June 16, Spencer Kornhaber, “The Dizzying, Surreal Journey of ‘The Leftovers’”, in The Atlantic, →ISSN

   As people gushed over and grappled with the model’s capabilities, to a degree that exceeded many employees’ expectations, the web app [DALL·E 2] went viral across social media, producing a plethora of wild, wacky, and surreal AI-generated art in its wake.

   2025, Karen Hao, Empire of AI, New York City: Penguin Press, →ISBN

   Synonyms: dreamlike, surrealist

plural surreals

1. mathematicsA surreal number.