Word.ws English Dictionary

fantasy

/ˈfæntəsi/[ˈfæ̃ɾ̃əsi]

fantasy noun: that which comes from one's imagination or the act of imagining things.

Noun

fantasy (countable and uncountable, plural fantasies)

  1. That which comes from one's imagination or the act of imagining things.
    • Is not this something more than fantasy?c. 1599–1602, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, London, act 1, scene 1
    • A thousand fantasies / Begin to throng into my memory.1634, John Milton, Comus
  2. The literary genre generally dealing with themes of magic and the supernatural, imaginary worlds and creatures, etc.
  3. A fantastical design.
    • Embroidered with fantasies and flourishes of gold thread.1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, chapter 7, in The Scarlet Letter
  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. (transitive) To conceive (something) mentally; to imagine.
  2. (literary, transitive) To fantasize about (something).
    • Instead of phantasying marriage, she actually feels that she is already married to the man of her phantasy.1946, A. A. Brill, Lectures on Psychoanalytic Psychiatry, Alfred Knopf, page 127
    • 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.2013, Mark J. Blechner, Hope and Mortality: Psychodynamic Approaches to AIDS and HIV
  3. (intransitive) To conceive mentally; to imagine.
    • Firſt I phantaſied that if I liſt to take vpon me the crowne and imperiall Scepter of the realme, now was the time propice and conuenient.1569, Richard Grafton, “Richarde the Thirde”, in A Chronicle at Large and Meere History of the Affayres of Englande […], volume II, London: […] Henry Denham, […], for Richarde Tottle and Humffrey...
  4. (intransitive, obsolete) To have a fancy for; to be pleased with; to like.
    • Which he doth most fantasy.1551, Thomas More, “(please specify the Internet Archive page)”, in Raphe Robynson [i.e., Ralph Robinson], transl., A Fruteful, and Pleasaunt Worke of the Best State of a Publyque Weale, and of the...
    • The kyng fantasied so much his daughter Anne that almost everything began to grow out of frame and good order1641, George Cavendish, Thomas Wolsey, Late Cardinall, his Lyffe and Deathe

fantasy meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

fantasy in Hindi

that which comes from one's imagination
कल्पना kalpanā, काल्पनिक kālpanik, स्वैरकल्पना svairkalpanā
literary genre
कल्पना kalpanā, काल्पनिक kālpanik

fantasy in Tamil

மிகுபுனைவு, வியந்தகை

fantasy in Marathi

fantasy
कल्पनाजाल kalpanājāl

fantasy in Urdu

literary genre
فَنْطاسِیَہ fantāsiya
More languagesFewer languages
fantasy in Bengali
কল্পনা, উদ্ভট কল্পনা
fantasy in Telugu
ఫాంటసీ
fantasy in Malayalam
ഭാവനാശക്തി, വിചിത്രകല്പന, ഭ്രമകല്പന, മനോരഥസൃഷ്ടി
fantasy in Kannada
ಫ್ಯಾಂಟಸಿ
fantasy in Gujarati
કાલ્પનિકતા
fantasy in Tagalog
pantasya
fantasy in Arabic
خَيَال ḵayāl, فَنْتَازِيَا fantāziyā
fantasy in Malay
fantasi
fantasy in Indonesian
fantasi
fantasy in Thai
ความเพ้อฝัน kwaam-pə́ə-fǎn, การฝันเฟื่อง gaan-fǎn-fʉ̂ʉang, แฟนตาซี fɛɛn-dtaa-sii, จินตนิมิต jin-dtà-ní-mít
fantasy in Vietnamese
kì ảo, kỳ ảo

Examples of fantasy in a sentence

  • These plans seem unworkable; moreover, a budget for their implementation remains a fantasy.
  • Fantasy camp is where would-be Gretzkies can skate with members of professional teams.
  • If she thinks she can become President, she's living in a fantasy world!

All 40 example sentences with fantasy

Forms of fantasy

Noun
pluralfantasies
alternative form (archaic)phantasy
alternative form (obsolete)phantasie
Verb
third-person singular presentfantasies
present participlefantasying
past participlefantasied
pastfantasied

Plural of fantasy: fantasies

Origin of fantasy

Noun inherited from Middle English fantasie, from Old French fantasie (“fantasy”), from Latin phantasia (“imagination”), from Ancient Greek φαντασία (phantasía, “apparition”), from φαντάζω (phantázō, “to render visible”), from φαντός (phantós, “visible”), from φαίνω (phaínō, “to make visible”); from the same root as φάος (pháos, “light”); ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰh₂nyéti, from the root *bʰeh₂- (“to shine”). Doublet of fancy, fantasia, phantasia, and phantasy. Verb from Middle English fantasien, from Old French fantasier. Doublet of fancy.

Words formed from fantasy

Phrases with fantasy

Questions about fantasy

What does fantasy mean?
Fantasy means that which comes from one's imagination or the act of imagining things.
What is fantasy in Hindi?
Fantasy in Hindi is कल्पना (kalpanā), काल्पनिक (kālpanik), स्वैरकल्पना (svairkalpanā). See Fantasy meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is fantasy?
Fantasy can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce fantasy?
Fantasy is pronounced /ˈfæntəsi/.
What is the plural of fantasy?
The plural of fantasy is fantasies.

Words near fantasy in the dictionary

  1. fantastika
  2. fantastique
  3. fantastries
  4. fantastry
  5. fantasts
  6. fantasy
  7. fantasy baseball
  8. fantasy casket
  9. fantasy coffin
  10. fantasy collapse
  11. fantasy football

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fantasy (page history and authors); fantasy (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); कल्पनाजाल (Marathi) (page history and authors); fantasy (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); fantasy (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); fantasy (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); fantasy (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); fantasy (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-fantasy.wav.

Cite this entry: “fantasy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fantasy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.