Etymologically
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fantasma

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Pronunciation

  • /fanˈtaz.ma/[1]

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

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