fantasy

/ˈfæntəsi/
/ˈfæntəsi/
IPA guide

Other forms: fantasies; fantasied; fantasying

A fantasy is something you imagine, which might involve dragons, unicorns, or an imaginary best friend. If you live in a fantasy world, you're not worrying much about reality — pleasant, maybe, but not very practical.

Fantasy is dreams and imagination. In a football fantasy league, you can create your own dream team. In literature, fantasy — a genre similar to science fiction — might include a story about a three-headed squirrel and a bionic aardvark who fall in love on a planet made entirely of strawberries. Romance can be fantasy, too, according to a Billy Joel song: "It's just a fantasy. It's not the real thing. But sometimes a fantasy is all you need."

Definitions of fantasy
  1. noun
    imagination unrestricted by reality
    “a schoolgirl fantasy”
    synonyms: phantasy
    see moresee less
    types:
    show 4 types...
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    dream, pipe dream
    a fantastic but vain hope (from fantasies induced by the opium pipe)
    fantasy life, phantasy life
    an imaginary life lived in a fantasy world
    fairyland, fantasy world, phantasy world
    something existing solely in the imagination (but often mistaken for reality)
    paracosm
    a prolonged fantasy world invented by children; can have a definite geography and language and history
    type of:
    imagination, imaginativeness, vision
    the formation of a mental image of something that is not perceived as real and is not present to the senses
  2. noun
    fiction with a large amount of imagination in it
    “she made a lot of money writing romantic fantasies”
    synonyms: phantasy
    see moresee less
    types:
    science fiction
    literary fantasy involving the imagined impact of science on society
    cyberpunk
    a genre of fast-paced science fiction involving oppressive futuristic computerized societies
    type of:
    fiction
    a literary work based on the imagination and not necessarily on fact
  3. noun
    something many people believe that is false
    synonyms: fancy, illusion, phantasy
    see moresee less
    types:
    bubble
    an impracticable and illusory idea
    ignis fatuus, will-o'-the-wisp
    an illusion that misleads
    wishful thinking
    the illusion that what you wish for is actually true
    type of:
    misconception
    an incorrect conception
  4. verb
    indulge in fantasies
    synonyms: fantasise, fantasize, phantasy
    see moresee less
    type of:
    conceive of, envisage, ideate, imagine
    form a mental image of something that is not present or that is not the case
Pronunciation
US
/ˈfæntəsi/
UK
/ˈfæntəsi/
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