fantasy

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English fantasie, from Old French fantasie (“fantasy”), from Latin phantasia (“imagination”), from Ancient Greek φαντασία (phantasía, “apparition”), from φαντάζω (phantázō, “to render visible”), from φαντός (phantós, “visible”), from φαίνω (phaínō, “to make visible”); from the same root as φάος (pháos, “light”); ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰh₂nyéti, from the root *bʰeh₂- (“to shine”). Doublet of fancy, fantasia, phantasia, and phantasy.

noun

1. That which comes from one's imagination.
   Is not this something more than fantasy? c. 1599–1602, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, London, act 1, scene 1
   A thousand fantasies / Begin to throng into my memory. 1634, John Milton, Comus
   Try as hard as it can, empirical science cannot come up with a naturalistic explanation; it can only slip into fantasies that make scientists feel good because they are in harmony with their opinions, prejudices, and unconscious assumptions about the nature of reality. 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 92
2. (literature) The literary genre generally dealing with themes of magic and the supernatural, imaginary worlds and creatures, etc.
3. A fantastical design.
   Embroidered with fantasies and flourishes of gold thread. 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, chapter 7, in The Scarlet Letter
4. (slang) The drug gamma-hydroxybutyric acid.

verb

1. (literary, psychoanalysis) To fantasize (about).
   Perhaps I would be able to help him recapture the well-being and emotional closeness he fantasied his brother had experienced with his parents prior to his birth. 2013, Mark J. Blechner, Hope and Mortality: Psychodynamic Approaches to AIDS and HIV
2. (obsolete) To have a fancy for; to be pleased with; to like.
   The kyng fantasied so much his daughter Anne that almost everything began to grow out of frame and good order 1641, George Cavendish, Thomas Wolsey, Late Cardinall, his Lyffe and Deathe
   Which he doth most fantasy. 1518, Thomas More, translated by Robynson, Utopia, published 1551
3. (transitive) To imagine; to conceive mentally.