fantasy

Formsfantasies, fantasying, fantasied

1. 1
   noununcountable

   That which comes from a person's imagination rather than from real life.

   The plan to get rich overnight was nothing but fantasy.

   Her paintings mix careful observation with pure fantasy.

   Similarimagination, invention, make-believe, fiction, illusion

   Oppositereality, fact, truth

   Note

   The root sense, and the one the word's history explains best: Latin phantasia, "imagination", goes back to a Greek word for an apparition, from a verb meaning "to make visible". A fantasy is what the mind shows itself. The older ph- spelling lasted a long time. Rider Haggard still writes phantasy in She (1887). The noun counts both ways: pure fantasy, or Milton's "a thousand fantasies."

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The literary genre that deals with themes of magic and the supernatural, imaginary worlds, and invented creatures.

   Tolkien's novels shaped modern fantasy for generations of writers.

   The publisher launched a new imprint devoted entirely to fantasy.

   Note

   A publisher's and bookseller's category, built out of the imagination sense. As a mass noun it names the genre itself: she reads fantasy, a shelf of fantasy. As a count noun it names a single work: a fantasy in three volumes, the best fantasies of the decade. Keep the two uses distinct, because "a fantasy" on its own can still mean a private daydream.

3. 3
   verbtransitive

   To conceive something mentally; to imagine it or form it in the mind.

   As a child she would fantasy elaborate cities, drawing maps of streets that never existed.

   The inventor fantasied machines that no workshop of his time could build.

   Similarimagine, conceive, envision, envisage, picture

   Note

   A rare verb beside the everyday fantasize, and it has its own spelling traps. The y becomes ie before -s and -ed (she fantasies, he fantasied) but stays before -ing (fantasying). Here the verb takes a direct object: you fantasy a city, a machine, a life. Since imagine or fantasize would usually serve, choosing this verb is a deliberate effect.

4. 4
   verbintransitive

   To engage in imagining; to conceive ideas and images in the mind.

   Left alone in the orchard, the poet would fantasy for hours.

   Sailors on long voyages often fantasy about the harbors waiting for them.

   Similardaydream, dream, muse, imagine

5. 5
   noununcountable

   A design marked by fanciful, imaginative invention rather than realistic representation.

   The iron gate was pure fantasy, all curling vines and blossoms no garden ever grew.

   His sketchbooks run to fantasy, filling page after page with impossible architecture.

   Similarwhimsy, invention, fancy

   Oppositerealism

   Note

   Decorators and needleworkers use the word for ornament that invents rather than copies. Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850) describes cloth embroidered with "fantasies and flourishes of gold thread". The pairing is telling: here fantasies are individual motifs, counted like flourishes. Without an article it describes a whole style, as in a gate that is pure fantasy.

6. 6
   verbliterarytransitive

   To fantasize about something, forming and dwelling on it in the imagination.

   In their letters, the lovers fantasy a quiet house they may never share.

   Throughout the long winter he fantasied an early spring and a full harvest.

   Similarimagine, picture, envision

   Note

   In psychoanalytic writing the verb names a wish the mind builds. It often takes a whole clause rather than a noun. Mark J. Blechner's Hope and Mortality (2013) describes a patient who "fantasied his brother had experienced" closeness with their parents. Elsewhere fantasize is the usual verb. Fantasy used as a verb marks a clinical or deliberately literary register.

7. 7
   nounslanguncountable

   A slang name for the drug gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB), a powerful depressant.

   Paramedics suspected the unconscious man had taken fantasy earlier that night.

   Dealers were selling fantasy in small vials outside the club.

   SimilarGHB

   Note

   Street slang for GHB. Nothing in the word's form tells a listener it is not the ordinary "imagination" word". Only context does. Like most drug names it takes no article: someone takes fantasy, or sells fantasy. It belongs to talk about drugs and nightlife. In formal or medical writing, GHB or the chemical name is the safe choice.

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