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PHANTOM
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Something existing in perception only
Example:
a ghostly apparition at midnight
Synonyms:
apparition; fantasm; phantasm; phantasma; phantom; shadow
Classified under:
Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents
Hypernyms ("phantom" is a kind of...):
illusion; semblance (an erroneous mental representation)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "phantom"):
flying saucer; UFO; unidentified flying object (an (apparently) flying object whose nature is unknown; especially those considered to have extraterrestrial origins)
Flying Dutchman (a phantom ship that is said to appear in storms near the Cape of Good Hope)
ghost; shade; specter; spectre; spook; wraith (a mental representation of some haunting experience)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A ghostly appearing figure
Example:
we were unprepared for the apparition that confronted us
Synonyms:
apparition; fantasm; phantasm; phantasma; phantom; specter; spectre
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("phantom" is a kind of...):
disembodied spirit; spirit (any incorporeal supernatural being that can become visible (or audible) to human beings)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "phantom"):
Flying Dutchman (the captain of a phantom ship (the Flying Dutchman) who was condemned to sail against the wind until Judgment Day)
II. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Something apparently sensed but having no physical reality
Example:
the amputee's illusion of a phantom limb
Classified under:
Similar:
unreal (not actually such; being or seeming fanciful or imaginary)
Context examples:
His head was very near to hers, and when wandering phantoms of breeze stirred her hair so that it touched his face, the printed pages swam before his eyes.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Let me stand aside, to see the phantoms of those days go by me, accompanying the shadow of myself, in dim procession.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Radiation alters the chemical structure of the gel, and the changes appear when scientists view a cross-section of the phantom on the computer screen.
(Gel Dosimetry, NCI Thesaurus)
The phantom shapes, which were becoming gradually materialised from the moonbeams, were those of the three ghostly women to whom I was doomed.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
It was from companionship with this baby-phantom I had been roused on that moonlight night when I heard the cry; and it was on the afternoon of the day following I was summoned downstairs by a message that some one wanted me in Mrs. Fairfax's room.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
With tears and prayers and tender hands, Mother and sisters made her ready for the long sleep that pain would never mar again, seeing with grateful eyes the beautiful serenity that soon replaced the pathetic patience that had wrung their hearts so long, and feeling with reverent joy that to their darling death was a benignant angel, not a phantom full of dread.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
Many features that appear to be individual jets of material erupting along the length of prominent fractures in the moon's south polar region might be phantoms created by an optical illusion, according to the new study.
(Saturn Moon's Activity Could Be 'Curtain Eruptions', NASA)
They are also referred to as anthropomorphic phantoms. (2) Phantoms that are used for standardization and inter-comparison of various radiation conditions are often referred to as Standards. (3) Reference Phantoms include phantoms used to derive radiation dose calculations, mineral density equivalences or other similar type measurements.
(Imaging Phantoms, NCI Thesaurus)
By this time I had searched all the tombs in the chapel, so far as I could tell; and as there had been only three of these Un-Dead phantoms around us in the night, I took it that there were no more of active Un-Dead existent.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality: and the strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white face and arms specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving where all else was still, had the effect of a real spirit: I thought it like one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Bessie's evening stories represented as coming out of lone, ferny dells in moors, and appearing before the eyes of belated travellers.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
