imaginary, fanciful, visionary, fantastic, chimerical, quixotic mean unreal or unbelievable. imaginary applies to something which is fictitious and purely the product of one's imagination.

FANCIFUL definition: characterized by or showing fancy; capricious or whimsical in appearance. See examples of fanciful used in a sentence.

FANCIFUL definition: 1. not likely to succeed or happen in the real world: 2. not likely to succeed or happen in the…. Learn more.

1. Created in the fancy; imaginary or unreal: a fanciful story. 2. Tending to indulge in fancy: a fanciful mind. 3. Showing invention or whimsy in design; imaginative. See Synonyms at fantastic.

Definition of fanciful adjective in Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Meaning, pronunciation, picture, example sentences, grammar, usage notes, synonyms and more.

If you describe an idea as fanciful, you disapprove of it because you think it comes from someone's imagination, and is therefore unrealistic or unlikely to be true.

Jan 18, 2026 · Adjective fanciful (comparative more fanciful, superlative most fanciful) Imaginative or fantastic; ignoring reality.

Turn fanciful around and you get "full of fancy," which gives you the gist of the meaning. The adjective refers to something not quite real, usually something with a whimsical or even dreamlike quality.

fan•ci•ful (fan′ si fəl), adj. characterized by or showing fancy; capricious or whimsical in appearance: a fanciful design of butterflies and flowers. suggested by fancy; imaginary; unreal: fanciful lands of …

Fanciful refers to something that is imaginative, unreal, creative, fantastical, or whimsical. It often denotes ideas, objects, or actions that are not influenced by practical considerations and might be …