fantastic

Pluralfantastics

1. 1
   wonderfuladjective

   Extremely good; wonderful or excellent, often used to add strong positive emphasis.

   She got a fantastic job offer just weeks after graduating.

   The team delivered a fantastic performance in the championship final.

   UsageStrong praise, so it pairs with absolutely or simply (absolutely fantastic) more often than with very.

   Similarwonderful, brilliant, awesome, fabulous, splendid

   Oppositeterrible, awful, dreadful, mediocre

   Note

   The everyday sense sits furthest from the word's roots. The Greek source meant "imaginary." Between the two stands the "hard to believe" meaning, and what is beyond belief is easily heard as beyond praise.

2. 2
   imaginativeadjective

   Strange and highly imaginative, as if from a dream or fantasy rather than real life; oddly or extravagantly shaped.

   The painter filled the canvas with fantastic creatures unlike anything in nature.

   Her stories blend everyday life with fantastic elements like flying ships and living statues.

   UsageBecause fantastic usually sounds like praise, fantastical is clearer for this meaning: fantastical creatures.

   Similarfantastical

   Note

   Here the word keeps faith with its Greek source: dragons and goblins, or the imagination stirred, as Edward Carpenter put it in 1920, "to fantastic activity." It can also mean merely deluded, as in a fantastic view of one's own importance.

3. 3
   far-fetchedadjective

   So implausible or far-fetched as to seem possible only in fantasy; hard to credit as real.

   The witness gave a fantastic account of events that the jury found impossible to accept.

   His claims grew more fantastic with every retelling.

   UsageUsually with words like claims, story, account or faith, where the context rules out praise.

   Similarunrealistic, implausible, wild

   Note

   Disbelief is the point here, and the old spelling shows the Greek behind it: in Robert Boyle's 1661 dialogue The Sceptical Chymist, the character Carneades complains of "Phantastick" discourses. The sense is still current, and it was sharp in Richard Feynman's 1986 report on the Shuttle, where "management's fantastic faith in the machinery" means faith beyond reason.

4. 4
   hugeadjectivecolloquial

   Of a size, amount, or degree: enormous, going well beyond what is normal or anticipated.

   The painting sold for a fantastic sum, nearly ten times what the experts had predicted.

   Rents downtown have climbed at a fantastic pace over the past decade.

   UsageWith nouns of amount and speed: a fantastic sum, fantastic speeds. A fantastic price may be huge or a bargain.

   Similarenormous, huge, staggering, astronomical

   Oppositemodest

   Note

   Here the word measures rather than praises, and it stays close to the unbelievable meaning: a sum so large it seems to belong in fantasy.

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