FANCIFUL • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Fanciful

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/fˈænsɪfəl/ Listen

adjective

Fanciful adj.

Full of fancy; guided by fancy, rather than by reason and experience; whimsical; as, a fanciful man forms visionary projects.

Conceived in the fancy; not consistent with facts or reason; abounding in ideal qualities or figures; as, a fanciful scheme; a fanciful theory.

Curiously shaped or constructed; as, she wore a fanciful headdress. "Gather up all fancifullest shells."

Synonyms: 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.

See images of 'Fanciful'

Etymology of 'Fanciful'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Fanciful" Quotes from Famous Books

... composer's relatives, with whom he was acquainted. While gratefully acknowledging his achievements, I must not omit to indicate his shortcomings—his unchecked partiality for, and boundless admiration of his hero; his uncritical acceptance and fanciful embellishments of anecdotes and hearsays; and the extreme paucity of his information concerning the period of Chopin's life which begins with his settlement in Paris. In 1878 appeared a second edition of the work, distinguished from the first by a few additions and many judicious omissions, ...

— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... were captivated by the grace and beauty of the new mythology, which was arising to adorn the literature of Europe. Most of the alchymists of the sixteenth century, although ignorant of the Rosicrucians as a sect, were, in some degree, tinctured with their fanciful tenets: but before we speak more fully of these poetical visionaries, it will be necessary to resume the history of the hermetic folly, and trace the gradual change that stole over the dreams of the adepts. It will be seen that the infatuation increased rather than diminished ...

— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... parks for the common people, and art galleries and club-house country inns for the more finicky classes. Even before there was any increase in population, a marked increase in street-railway traffic took place. There was nothing fanciful about his ...

— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... luxurious greenery. Italy rings like metal; England is a muffled drum. The one has the ardour of Beauty; the other the charm of the Picturesque. I dwell upon this because I seem to see—perhaps I am fanciful—a kindred distinction between the north and the south in quality of mind. The Greek intelligence, and the Italian, is pitiless, searching, white as the Mediterranean sunshine; the English and German is kindly, discreet, amiably and tenderly confused. The one blazes ...

— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson

... prepared for those charming lips. How those sweet lips must shine after eating these puffs! First, huge sheets of dough are rolled out till the paste is about as thin as silver paper: then an artist forms the dough-muslin into a sort of drapery, curling it round and round in many fanciful and pretty shapes, until it is all got into the circumference of a round metal tray in which it is baked. Then the cake is drenched in grease most profusely; and, finally, a quantity of syrup is poured over it, when the delectable mixture is complete. The moon-faced ...

— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

More quotes...