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fan·ta·sy (făntə-sē, -zē)
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n. pl. fan·ta·sies
1. The creative imagination; unrestrained fancy.
2. Something, such as an invention, that is a creation of the fancy.
3. A capricious or fantastic idea; a conceit.
4.
a. A genre of fiction or other artistic work characterized by fanciful or supernatural elements.
b. A work of this genre.
5. An imagined event or sequence of mental images, such as a daydream, usually fulfilling a wish or psychological need.
6. An unrealistic or improbable supposition.
7. Music See fantasia.
8. A coin issued especially by a questionable authority and not intended for use as currency.
9. Obsolete A hallucination.
adj.
Relating to or being a game in which participants act as owners of imaginary sports teams whose personnel consists of actual players selected from a professional sports league and team performance is determined by the combined statistics of the players.
tr.v. fan·ta·sied, fan·ta·sy·ing, fan·ta·sies
To imagine; visualize.

[Middle English fantasie, fantsy, from Old French fantasie, from Latin phantasia, from Greek phantasiā, appearance, imagination, from phantazesthai, to appear, from phantos, visible, from phainesthai, phan-, to appear, passive of phainein, to show; see bhā-1 in the Appendix of Indo-European roots.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
 

Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices

    Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:

    Indo-European Roots

    Semitic Roots

    The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.