Etymologically
Log in

fantastic

This is the current revision of this entry, as edited by bogdan on 15 October 2026 at 20:26. This address is a permanent link to this version.
Changes in this edit History

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
  • 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