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phantasy world

phantasy world

9.1
An imagined place someone believes is real
  • noun
  • /ˈfæn.tə.si wɜrld/
  • Archaic
translation icon : mundo de fantasía
  • As a child, Sarah often retreated into her own phantasy world to escape reality.

Examples

  • He lives in a phantasy world, unable to accept the truth about his situation.

  • The novel explores a phantasy world created by the protagonist's vivid imagination.

  • She often escapes to her phantasy world when life gets tough.

  • In his phantasy world, he is a superhero.

  • As a child, Sarah often retreated into her own phantasy world to escape reality.

  • He lives in a phantasy world, unable to accept the truth about his situation.

  • The novel explores a phantasy world created by the protagonist's vivid imagination.

Synonyms

fantasy world
vsphantasy world
21 4.4

An imagined place in your mind with magic and strange creatures

is believed real by the person rather than accepted as purely imaginary
fairyland
vsphantasy world
  • Literature
7 5.5

A beautiful imaginary place in stories where small magical creatures live

covers imagined worlds generally rather than specifically magical places with fairies
fantasyland
vsphantasy world
3 6.1

An imaginary place where everything is perfect and magical

focuses more on being an inwardly believed alternate reality than on perfection
dreamworld
vsphantasy world
2 6.6

An imagined perfect place that exists only in dreams

is more often taken as real by the experiencer rather than as idealized perfection
world of dreams
vsphantasy world
1 6.3

A place in your mind where you imagine things

is often experienced as real by the person rather than being clearly unreal
phantasy life
vsphantasy world
  • Archaic
9.9

An imagined life a person makes in their mind to escape real life

refers to a whole imagined world rather than a private imagined life
phantasy
vsphantasy world
  • Archaic
9.9

Ability to imagine unreal people, places or events

names a specific imagined world often treated as a real place by someone

Antonyms

1.4

The way things really are, not how we imagine or wish

253 3.9

Everyday life and work outside study or theory

How Imaginary

phantasy world
  • Archaic
9.1
mental image
7 3.8

Surface Forms

Morphology

phantasy + world

The meaning 'a world that exists only in one's imagination' is directly and transparently composed from 'phantasy' (imaginative fiction) + 'world' (a realm or sum of experiences). This compositional pattern (as in the common variant 'fantasy world') is cross-linguistically familiar and would be understandable to a B1 learner who knows both constituents.

Etymology

Phantasy world comes from the idea of a whole phantasy, an imagined story, and world, a place, that a person makes inside their mind. So when someone is said to be in a phantasy world, they are thinking the imagined place is real, meaning 'a world that exists only in someone's imagination' or 'unable to accept the truth'.