fancy

fancy n

1 Caprice, freak, whim, whimsy, conceit, vagary, crotchet

2 "imagination, fantasy

Antonyms: experience

3 Fancy, fantasy, phantasy, phantasm, vision, dream, daydream, nightmare are comparable when they denote a vivid idea or image, or a series of such ideas or images, present in the mind but having no concrete or objective reality.

Fancy (see also IMAGINATION) is applicable to anything which is conceived by the imagination, whether it recombines the elements of reality or is pure invention

{

surely this great chamber ... did not exist at all but as a gigantic fancy of his own— Galsworthy

}

{

the status of archaeological fact and fancy in the world today— W. W. Taylor

}

Fantasy applies to a fancy and especially to an organized series of fancies (as one presented in art) that is the product of an unrestrained imagination freed from the bonds of actuality

{

Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream is a pure fantasy

}

{

a thousand fantasies begin to throng into my memory, of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire, and airy tongues that syllable men's names— Milton

}

Phantasy, though sometimes used in place of fantasy, both as the power of free inventive imagination and as a product of that power, may apply particularly to the image-making power of the mind, whether the image is the result of sense perception or of the imagination, or to a product of that power and then may be strongly antony- mous to truth and reality

{

probably in his life, certainly in his poetry, there is no sharp boundary between phantasy and reality— Canby

}

{

phantasies created by the reading of Kubla Khan

}

Phantasm may be applied either to a phantasy, the mental image

{

figures ... of which the description had produced in you no phantasm— Taylor

}

or to a fantasy, especially to one that is hallucinatory

{

the phantasms of a disordered mind

}

Vision often implies an imagining, but it as frequently implies a seeing or a revelation. Specifically, however, the term is applied to something which the mind perceives as clearly or concretely as if revealed to it by a supernatural or mysterious power (see REVELATION), or as if viewed by a kind of spiritual sight or intuition, or as if seen in a dream; vision therefore often suggests a sight of something that is actually spiritual in essence or is beyond the range or power of the eyes or mind to grasp as a whole

{

a whole life . . . devoted to the patient pursuit of a single vision seen in youth— Eliot

}

{

each word's ... power of touching springs in the mind and of initiating visions— Montague

}

{

our vision of world law and some sort of worldwide law-enforcement agency— Sat. Review

}

Dream is the general term for the ideas or images present to the mind in sleep

{

thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter, in sleep a king, but waking no such matter— Shak.

}

{

your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions— Joel 2:28

}

In extended use dream, like daydream, suggests vague or idle, commonly happy, imaginings of future events or of nonexistent things

{

childhood's sunny dream— Shelley

}

{

a busy person has no time for daydreams

}

Nightmare applies to a frightful and oppressive dream which occurs in sleep or, by extension, to a vision or, sometimes, an actual experience which inspires terror or which cannot easily be shaken off

{

how many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares, were there a danger of their coming true!— L. P. Smith

}

Analogous words: figment, fabrication, fable, *fiction: notion, conception, "idea, concept

Antonyms: reality (in concrete sense)

fancy vb

1 dote, *like, love, enjoy, relish

Analogous words: *approve, endorse, sanction

Contrasted words: *disapprove, deprecate

2 imagine, conceive, envisage, envision, realize, *think

Analogous words: *conjecture, surmise, guess