fantastic

fantastic
fantastic
1. Fantastic is one of the most popular colloquial terms for ‘excellent, very enjoyable’. It is first recorded with this meaning in the 1930s and is now used in all sorts of contexts:

• Oh, Val, isn't it fantastic?… It's amazing, isn't it? —Margery Allingham, 1938

• Then suddenly I get a call saying, ‘We are going on the road,’ so I was in and it was fantastic —Guitarist, 1992.

The adverb fantastically is also common as a general intensifier:

• He's fantastically good-looking —Iris Murdoch, 1989

• I felt my badminton was going to suffer and I wasn't doing fantastically at uni either —Herald (Glasgow), 2007.

2. Both fantastic and fantastically meanwhile continue to be used in their more literal meanings connected with fantasy and imagination, albeit somewhat compromised by the newer meanings:

• We gazed in wonderment at the fantastic shape of the small island of Tindholmur as we passed —B. Tulloch, 1991

• De Quincey frequently dreamt of a fantastically elaborate and labyrinthine building —R. Castleden, 1993.


Modern English usage. 2014.

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Synonyms:
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Look at other dictionaries:

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  • fantastic — FANTÁSTIC, Ă, fantastici, ce, adj. 1. Care nu există în realitate; creat, plăsmuit de imaginaţie; ireal, fantasmagoric, fabulos. ♦ Literatură fantastică = gen de literatură în care elementul preponderent îl constituie imaginaţia, irealul. 2. Care …   Dicționar Român

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  • Fantastic — Single par Ami Suzuki extrait de l’album Connetta Face A Fantastic Face B Slow Motion Sortie 8 février 2006 …   Wikipédia en Français

  • fantastic — [fan tas′tik] adj. [ME fantastik < OFr fantastique < ML fantasticus < LL phantasticus < Gr phantastikos, able to present or represent to the mind < phantazein, to make visible < phainein, to show: see FANTASY] 1. existing in the …   English World dictionary

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  • Fantastic — Fan*tas tic, a. [F. fantastique, fr. Gr. ??????????? able to represent, fr. ????????? to make visible. See {Fancy}.] 1. Existing only in imagination; fanciful; imaginary; not real; chimerical. [1913 Webster] 2. Having the nature of a phantom;… …   The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

  • fantastic — [adj1] strange, different; imaginary absurd, artificial, capricious, chimerical, comical, crazy, eccentric, erratic, exotic, extravagant, extreme, fanciful, far fetched, fictional, foolish, foreign, freakish, grotesque, hallucinatory, illusive,… …   New thesaurus

  • Fantastic — Fan*tas tic, n. A person given to fantastic dress, manners, etc.; an eccentric person; a fop. Milton. [1913 Webster] Our fantastics, who, having a fine watch, take all ocasions to draw it out to be seen. Fuller. [1913 Webster] …   The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

  • fantastic — index delusive, ludicrous, nonexistent, noteworthy, prodigious (amazing), special, unusual Burton …   Law dictionary

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