fantasy

• phantasie (archaic)
• phantasy (chiefly dated)

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.

• IPA^(key): /ˈfæntəsi/

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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.

   • 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, OCLC 1167497017:

     The whole position was so tremendous and so absolutely unearthly, that I believe it actually lulled our sense of terror, but to this hour I often see it in my dreams, and at its mere phantasy wake up covered with cold sweat.

   • 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 92:

     Try as hard as it can, empirical science cannot come up with a naturalistic explanation; it can only slip into fantasies that make scientists feel good because they are in harmony with their opinions, prejudices, and unconscious assumptions about the nature of reality.

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.

• fantasize

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.
   • 1641, George Cavendish, Thomas Wolsey, Late Cardinall, his Lyffe and Deathe

     The kyng fantasied so much his daughter Anne that almost everything began to grow out of frame and good order

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

     Which he doth most fantasy.

3. (transitive) To imagine; to conceive mentally.

• cloud-cuckoo-land

Borrowed from English fantasy. Doublet of fantasie.

fantasy f

1. (literature) fantasy (literary genre)

Borrowed from English fantasy. Doublet of fantaisie.

• IPA^(key): /fɑ̃.ta.zi/

• Audio

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fantasy f (plural fantasys)

1. (literature) fantasy (literary genre)

Borrowed from English fantasy. Doublet of fantasi.

• IPA^(key): /ˈfæːn.tə.si/, /ˈfæːn.ta.si/

fantasy m (definite singular fantasyen, indefinite plural fantasyer, definite plural fantasyene)

1. (literature) fantasy (genre)

• “fantasy” in The Bokmål Dictionary.
• “fantasy” in Det Norske Akademis ordbok (NAOB).

Unadapted borrowing from English fantasy, from Middle English fantasie, from Old French fantasie, from Latin phantasia, from Ancient Greek φαντασία (phantasía), from φαντάζω (phantázō), from φαντός (phantós), from φαίνω (phaínō), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰh₂nyéti, from the root *bʰeh₂-. Doublet of fantastyczny, fantastyka, and fantazja.

• IPA^(key): /ˈfan.ta.zɨ/, /fanˈta.zɨ/
• Rhymes: -azɨ
• Syllabification: fan‧ta‧sy

fantasy n (indeclinable)

1. (literature) fantasy (genre)

fantasy (not comparable)

1. (relational) fantasy

Indeclinable.

• fantasy in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
• fantasy in Polish dictionaries at PWN