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FANTASTIC
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Ludicrously odd
Example:
a grotesque reflection in the mirror
Synonyms:
antic; fantastic; fantastical; grotesque
Classified under:
Similar:
strange; unusual (being definitely out of the ordinary and unexpected; slightly odd or even a bit weird)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Extraordinarily good or great; used especially as intensifiers
Example:
a tremendous achievement
Synonyms:
fantastic; grand; howling; marvellous; marvelous; rattling; terrific; tremendous; wonderful; wondrous
Classified under:
Similar:
extraordinary (beyond what is ordinary or usual; highly unusual or exceptional or remarkable)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Extravagantly fanciful in design, construction, appearance
Example:
Gaudi's fantastic architecture
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
fancy (not plain; decorative or ornamented)
Sense 4
Meaning:
Existing in fancy only
Example:
fantastic figures with bulbous heads the circumference of a bushel
Synonyms:
fantastic; fantastical
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
unreal (lacking in reality or substance or genuineness; not corresponding to acknowledged facts or criteria)
Derivation:
fantasy (imagination unrestricted by reality)
Sense 5
Meaning:
Fanciful and unrealistic; foolish
Example:
a fantastic idea of his own importance
Synonyms:
fantastic; wild
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
unrealistic (not realistic)
Derivation:
fantasy (imagination unrestricted by reality)
Context examples:
Behind him it stretched away in a mighty curve of many miles, losing itself in a fantastic jumble of mountains, snow-covered and silent.
(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)
Folklore, legends, myths and fairy tales have followed childhood through the ages, for every healthy youngster has a wholesome and instinctive love for stories fantastic, marvelous and manifestly unreal.
(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)
“I wished merely to prepare you for the worst, if the worst is to come. This man, this captain, is a brute, a demon, and one can never tell what will be his next fantastic act.”
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
High in the air, and straight up, soared the shape of white, now a struggling snowshoe rabbit that leaped and bounded, executing a fantastic dance there above him in the air and never once returning to earth.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
A man who had read deeply about Napoleon, or who had possibly received some hereditary family injury through the great war, might conceivably form such an idée fixe and under its influence be capable of any fantastic outrage.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I see myself passing on among the novelties of foreign towns, palaces, cathedrals, temples, pictures, castles, tombs, fantastic streets—the old abiding places of History and Fancy—as a dreamer might; bearing my painful load through all, and hardly conscious of the objects as they fade before me.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Your career will bring fantastic news within four days of the full moon in Taurus on November 12.
(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)
It was a long poem of six or seven hundred lines, and it was a fantastic, amazing, unearthly thing.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
“I cannot waste time over this sort of fantastic talk, Mr. Holmes,” he said.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I knew that the facts were true, but could I help to make a jury of countrymen believe so fantastic a story?
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
