Adjacent Words

Fanciful definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

FAN'CIFUL, a. [See Fancy.]
1. Guided by the imagination, rather than by reason and experience; subject to the influence of fancy; whimsical; applied to persons. A fanciful man forms visionary projects.
2. Dictated by the imagination; full of wild images; chimerical; whimsical; ideal; visionary; applied to things; as a fanciful scheme; a fanciful theory.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: indulging in or influenced by fancy; "a fanciful mind"; "all the notional vagaries of childhood" [syn: fanciful, notional]
2: not based on fact; unreal; "the falsehood about some fanciful secret treaties"- F.D.Roosevelt; "a small child's imaginary friends"; "to create a notional world for oneself" [syn: fanciful, imaginary, notional]
3: having a curiously intricate quality; "a fanciful pattern with intertwined vines and flowers"

Merriam Webster's

adjective Date: circa 1627 1. marked by fancy or unrestrained imagination rather than by reason and experience <a fanciful person> 2. existing in fancy only <a fanciful notion> 3. marked by or as if by fancy or whim <gave their children fanciful names> Synonyms: see imaginary • fancifully adverb • fancifulness noun

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. 1 existing only in the imagination or fancy. 2 indulging in fancies; whimsical, capricious. 3 fantastically designed, ornamented, etc.; odd-looking. Derivatives: fancifully adv. fancifulness n.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Fanciful Fan"ci*ful, a. 1. Full of fancy; guided by fancy, rather than by reason and experience; whimsical; as, a fanciful man forms visionary projects. 2. Conceived in the fancy; not consistent with facts or reason; abounding in ideal qualities or figures; as, a fanciful scheme; a fanciful theory. 3. Curiously shaped or constructed; as, she wore a fanciful headdress. Gather up all fancifullest shells. --Keats. Syn: Imaginative; ideal; visionary; capricious; chimerical; whimsical; fantastical; wild. Usage: Fanciful, Fantastical, Visionary. We speak of that as fanciful which is irregular in taste and judgment; we speak of it as fantastical when it becomes grotesque and extravagant as well as irregular; we speak of it as visionary when it is wholly unfounded in the nature of things. Fanciful notions are the product of a heated fancy, without any tems are made up of oddly assorted fancies, aften of the most whimsical kind; visionary expectations are those which can never be realized in fact. -- Fan"ci*ful*ly, adv. -Fan"ci*ful*ness, n.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

If you describe an idea as fanciful, you disapprove of it because you think it comes from someone's imagination, and is therefore unrealistic or unlikely to be true. ...fanciful ideas about Martian life... Designing silicon chips to mimic human organs sounds fanciful. ADJ [disapproval]

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

a. 1. Visionary, imaginative, whimsical, capricious. 2. Chimerical, imaginary, ideal, fantastical, wild.

Moby Thesaurus

Gothic, absurd, air-built, airy, antic, apocryphal, arbitrary, baroque, bizarre, brain-born, capricious, changeable, chimerical, cloud-built, conceptual, cranky, crotchety, curious, dream-built, dreamlike, ethereal, extravagant, fabulous, false, fancied, fancy-born, fancy-built, fancy-woven, fantasied, fantasque, fantastic, fatuitous, fatuous, fickle, fictional, fictitious, fictive, flaky, florid, freakish, gaseous, gossamery, grotesque, harebrained, humorsome, ideal, ideational, ideological, illusory, imaginary, imaginative, imagined, immaterial, impossible, impulsive, incomprehensible, inconceivable, inconstant, incredible, kinky, legendary, maggoty, make-believe, merely nominal, moody, motiveless, mythical, not real, notional, odd, original, outlandish, peculiar, petulant, phantomlike, preposterous, quirky, rarefied, rococo, shadowy, spirituous, subtile, subtle, supposititious, temperamental, tenuous, theoretical, unaccountable, unactual, unbelievable, unexpected, unimaginable, unreal, unrealistic, unreasonable, unrestrained, unsubstantial, unusual, vagarious, vagrant, vaporous, variable, visionary, wanton, wayward, whimsical, wild, windy, wrong