Edit page | Page history | Printable version

Fanciful

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)

Synonym: Imaginative, ideal, visionary, capricious, chimerical, whimsical, fantastical, wild.

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. Fancifully, -Fancifulness.