fantasy

 
Pronunciation: /ˈfantəsi, -zi/

noun (plural fantasies)

  • 1 [mass noun] the faculty or activity of imagining impossible or improbable things: his researches had moved into the realms of fantasy
  • [count noun] a fanciful mental image, typically one on which a person often dwells and which reflects their conscious or unconscious wishes: the notion of being independent is a child’s ultimate fantasy
  • [count noun] an idea with no basis in reality: it is a misleading fantasy to suggest that the bill can be implemented
  • a genre of imaginative fiction involving magic and adventure, especially in a setting other than the real world.
  • 2 Music a fantasia.

verb (fantasies, fantasying, fantasied)

[with object] literary
  • imagine the occurrence of; fantasize about: it is ludicrous to fantasy ‘disinventing’ the hydrogen bomb

Origin:

late Middle English: from Old French fantasie, from Latin phantasia, from Greek 'imagination, appearance', later 'phantom', from phantazein 'make visible'. From the 16th to the 19th cents the Latinized spelling phantasy was also used