fantasy

Alternative forms

• phantasie (archaic)
• phantasy (chiefly dated)

Etymology

From Old French fantasie (“fantasy”), from Latin phantasia (“imagination”), from Ancient Greek φαντασία (phantasía, “apparition”). Doublet of fancy.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈfæntəsi/, /ˈfæntəzi/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈfæntəsi/, /ˈfæntəzi/

• Audio (US)

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Noun

fantasy (countable and uncountable, plural fantasies)

1. That which comes from one's imagination.
   • c. 1599–1602, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, London, Act 1, Scene 1:

     Is not this something more than fantasy?

   • 1634, John Milton, Comus:

     A thousand fantasies / Begin to throng into my memory.

2. (literature) The literary genre generally dealing with themes of magic and the supernatural, imaginary worlds and creatures, etc.
3. A fantastical design.
   • 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, chapter 7, in The Scarlet Letter:

     Embroidered with fantasies and flourishes of gold thread.

4. (slang) The drug gamma-hydroxybutyric acid.

Verb

fantasy (third-person singular simple present fantasies, present participle fantasying, simple past and past participle fantasied)

1. (literary, psychoanalysis) To fantasize (about).
   • 2013, Mark J. Blechner, Hope and Mortality: Psychodynamic Approaches to AIDS and HIV:

     Perhaps I would be able to help him recapture the well-being and emotional closeness he fantasied his brother had experienced with his parents prior to his birth.

2. (obsolete) To have a fancy for; to be pleased with; to like.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Cavendish to this entry?)

   • 1518, Thomas More; Robynson, transl., Utopia, published 1551:

     Which he doth most fantasy.

Noun

fantasy f

1. (literature) fantasy (literary genre)

Noun

fantasy f (plural fantasys)

1. (literature) fantasy (literary genre)