fancying

Pluralfancyings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of fancy.

   He went about fancying himself the smartest person in the room.

   She kept fancying that the old house was watching her every move.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every sense of fancy, so context decides which one is meant. Followed by a that-clause, as in fancying that the house was watching her, it is the imagining sense, which now sounds dated. With a person as object, in informal British use, it means being attracted to them. The same spelling also works as a gerund, and as the noun for an imagined thing.

2. 2
   noun

   Something fancied or imagined, existing in the mind rather than in fact.

   These sad fancyings – chimeras, doubtless, of a sick and silly brain – led on the other and more special thoughts, concerning the eccentricities of Bartleby.

   1853, Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener

   Similarfantasy, imagining, figment, illusion

   Oppositereality, fact

   Note

   A countable noun made from the verb, so it takes a plural. Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener (1853) speaks of "these sad fancyings" and immediately calls them "chimeras, doubtless, of a sick and silly brain." That pairing shows the word's tone: imaginings that are idle or unfounded, closer to a chimera than to a considered idea.

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