phantasmagoric
1
9.9
- adjective
- /ˌfænˌtæzməˈɡɔrɪk/
- Literature
:
fantasmagórico
- The presence of steam circuses, as the roundabouts were called by their owners (245), creates a phantasmagoric effect that engenders a thoroughly mistaken love at first sight, a sort of love impossible in anteindustrial Wessex.
- phantasmagoric effect
And he says, as Knight and Bliss have proved, the phantasmagoric acrobatics of van Vog do not add up to a meaningful whole.
- And he says, as Knight and Bliss have proved, the phantasmagoric acrobatics of van Vog do not add up to a meaningful whole.
Examples
-
Like the bibelots in the House of Usher, the accumulated objects in the Holt house take on phantasmagoric properties.
Academic text (2016) -
Hence, there is no longer any ultimate (nonimaginary) reference point anchoring localized and recognizably phantasmagoric shifts in space and time.
Academic text (1994) -
Everything becomes fantasy, phantasmagoric, an infinity of mirrors.
Academic text (1994) -
Sexy, gritty, funny, phantasmagoric, scary, thrilling, fast, slow... you get the idea.
Blog text (21) -
As I write this paper about that phantasmagoric afternoon, I think above all of my menaced colleagues and the general air of unreason.
Academic text (1990) -
The fact that Therese, in his mind, has grown into mythical proportions also reveals that his view on reality is deranged and phantasmagoric.
Academic text (2009) -
Chivalrously, Dickens did not acknowledge that he himself may have contributed to the striking, phantasmagoric image of a solitary female wearing white, wandering a London street.
Academic text (2010) -
Jonathan Crary's Techniques of the Observer documents the rise of interest in the phantasmagoric and illusionary, and the era's increasingly strange and vivid speculations on the science of optics.
Fiction book (1996) -
The male narrator, symbiotic alter ego of the brutal men to whom this woman is in thrall, pursues her through one vaguely totalitarian state after another in a phantasmagoric narrative in which points of view and lines of narrative are constantly shifting.
Academic text (1997) -
The artist's new installation features phantasmagoric imagery that makes visitors feel as if they are in a dream.
Synonyms
81
7.0
Strange like a dream and not real
22
3.4
Feels soft, gentle and romantic, like a dream
21
8.0
Very strange and like something made up in dreams or stories
14
8.7
Looks and feels strange and dreamlike, often with bright changing colors
9
5.7
Having a calm, unreal quality as if you are half asleep
6
6.8
Like a dream with strange or impossible scenes that seem unreal
6
7.7
Having very bright colors and strange, swirling patterns
5
8.8
That makes someone see or hear things that are not real
4
7.9
Showing strange, dreamlike images and unreal combinations
1
9.9
Something that looks strange and like a vivid dream
1
9.9
Having the strange, unreal feeling of a dream
Having a quality like a dream or a ghost that seems unreal
Being unreal and like a dream
Showing very strange dreamlike scenes with bright melting colors
Having a soft, hazy look that seems slightly blurred
A mood that feels like a soft, half-remembered dream
Antonyms
How Dreamlike
Surface Forms
Morphology
phantasmagoric = phantasmagoria (semi-transparent) = phantasmagoria + ic
The adjective is transparently formed by adding '-ic' to the noun 'phantasmagoria', but the noun itself is a rare/loanword with obscure internal structure for average learners.
Etymology
The word phantasmagoric comes from the old entertainment phantasmagoria, a traveling 'ghost show' that used light and moving images to create strange, dreamlike scenes. The first part phantasm means 'ghost' or 'image', like the familiar word phantom, so phantasmagoric describes something that feels unreal, shifting, and like a moving dream.