fantastic

Pronunciation

• IPA: /fænˈtæs.tɪk/^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English fantastik,^[2][3] borrowed from Old French fantastique,^[4][2][5] from Medieval Latin fantasticus,^[4][5] from Late Latin phantasticus (“imaginary”),^[4][2] from Ancient Greek φανταστικός (phantastikós, “able to imagine”),^[4][2] from φαντάζω (phantázō, “to make visible”), middle voice phantázesthai “to picture to oneself, imagine”,^[4][2][5] from φαίνω (phaínō, “to show”).^[2][6] It is related to fantasy, fancy, phantasm and phantom.^[6][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of the faculty of fantasy or imagination: about 1385, in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales,^[2] and “imaginary, unreal” before 1387, in Trevisa.^[2][7] Etymonline dates it to the late 14th century, existing only in the imagination.^[4]

Semantic evolution

“Imaginative” is from the 15th century,^[5] and “fanciful, impulsive, capricious”, also foppish in dress, from 1488.^[7] “Extravagantly fanciful” is from the 16th century,^[5] and the spelling with ph- was frequent in the 17th and 18th centuries.^[5] Shakespeare and his contemporaries also had the noun fantastic, from Italian fantastico “one who acts ridiculously”.^[4] To trip the light fantastic, to dance, goes back to Milton's L'Allegro (1645), “on the light fantastic toe”.^[6] The trivial sense “wonderful, marvellous” is from 1938^[4] or the 1930s.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 1385 – of the imagination, in Chaucer.^[2]
• before 1387 – imaginary, unreal.^[2][7]
• 1488 – capricious.^[7]
• 16th century – extravagantly fanciful.^[5]
• 1645 – light fantastic, in Milton.^[6]
• 1930s – wonderful, excellent.^[6][4]

Modern meaning

Adjective

1. (informal) Wonderful; superb.
2. Extremely large or great: a fantastic sum.
3. Strange or bizarre in form or appearance.
4. Based on or existing only in fantasy; unreal.
5. Extravagantly fanciful; not practical.

Noun

1. (archaic) An eccentric person.

Word family

• fantasticality
• fantastically
• fantasticalness
• fantabulous
• fantasticate
• superfantastic
• unfantastic

Related words

• fantasy
• fantasise
• fantasize
• fancy
• phantasm
• phantom
• fantastical
• phenomenon
• emphasis

Usage notes

The American Heritage Dictionary compares fantastic, which describes what seems hardly related to the real world, with bizarre, grotesque, fanciful and exotic.^[8]

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d e f g Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c d e f Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin