fantasma

Forms

fantasma m (plural fantasmi)^[1] Old forms include Old Italian fantasmo and Old Italian phantasma, with the old plural Old Italian fantasmate.^[2][3] The popular form fantasima is also recorded.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is a learned word, borrowed from Latin phantasma (“ghost, apparition”), from Ancient Greek φάντασμα (phántasma, “apparition, vision; ghost”), a derivative of φαντάζω (phantázō, “to make visible, (middle) to appear”).^[5][6][7][3] The Greek verb is the source of fantasia too.^[6][3] The word was used as a feminine in early texts because of its ending in ⟨-a⟩, while the masculine continues the Greek and Latin neuter.^[5][3]

Spoken Latin altered the word into forms like *fantauma, the source of French fantôme and Old Occitan fantauma, and *pantasima, which survives in Sardinian pantasima and in southern Italy.^[6][8][9] Nocentini explains the first by a Greek variant φάνταγμα (phántagma).^[6] Spanish fantasma and Portuguese fantasma are learned like the Italian word.^[9][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's earliest record is the Florentine Fiori e vita di filosafi (1271–1275), with the sense “incorporeal being, apparition”.^[2] DELI's first date for the feminine is Guittone d'Arezzo, before 1294, for the image of a dead person seen by a troubled mind, a ghost.^[5]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the word also meant an empty image created by the mind, also in dreams, and a hideous apparition;^[2][10] Francesco da Barberino and others used it for a nightmare.^[2][10] In Aristotelian and Thomist philosophy the fantasma was the image of a thing perceived by the senses, a meaning still used in the 19th century by Rosmini.^[3][4]

The sense “illusion, image with no basis in reality” is dated before 1498 in Savonarola, who also used the masculine.^[5] In the 20th century the word came to be used after a noun as an invariable adjective, “nonexistent, only apparent”: città fantasma translates the English ghost town and scrittore fantasma ghost writer.^[11][12][7] Fantasmagoria “magic-lantern show” (1801) is French fantasmagorie, a name coined in 1798 from the same Greek word.^[5] English borrowed phantasma in 1598.^[13]

Timeline

• 1271–1275 – The Fiori di filosafi have the word.^[2]
• Before 1294 – Guittone d'Arezzo uses it as a feminine for a ghost.^[5]
• Before 1498 – Savonarola uses it for an illusion, and as a masculine.^[5]
• 1598 – English phantasma is recorded.^[13]
• 1801 – Fantasmagoria is recorded.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. ghost, spectre: the supposed apparition of a dead person: Dicono che nella villa abbandonata si aggiri un fantasma.^[14][12][15]
2. An illusion, a creation of the imagination with no reality: Insegue da anni il fantasma della ricchezza.^[14][12][15]
3. A haunting thought or memory, something from the past that comes back to trouble one: i fantasmi della guerra.^[14][12]
4. (psychoanalysis) A fantasy, an imagined scene in which a conscious or unconscious wish is fulfilled.^[14][12][7]
5. (philosophy) In Aristotelian psychology, the mental image of something perceived by the senses.^[14][12]
6. (invariable, after a noun) Nonexistent, only apparent, or unofficial: città fantasma, governo fantasma.^[14][12][7]

Word family

• fantasmagoria
• fantasmagorico
• fantasmatico

Related words

• fantasia
• fantasima
• French fantôme
• Latin phantasma

Usage notes

Essere il fantasma di sé stesso is said of someone so worn out as to be hardly recognisable.^[14][7][11]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ a b c d e f Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
4. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
6. ^ a b c d e Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
7. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
8. ^ Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1595
9. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
10. ^ a b Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 422
11. ^ a b Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
12. ^ a b c d e f g Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
13. ^ a b Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
14. ^ a b c d e f g De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
15. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse