phant-, phanta-, phas-; -phasic, -phant

1. To mentally imagine something: Bruce fantasized about going to school and making an "A+" on the English test that he would be taking.
2. To conceive fanciful or extravagant notions, ideas, suppositions, etc: Henry keeps fantasizing about having the ideal job after he graduates from high school.
3. Etymology: from Latin which came from Greek phantasia, "appearance, image, perception, imagination". © ALL rights are reserved.

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1. A supposed being; such as, a ghost or a disembodied spirit, that can be seen but does not have physical substance.
2. An understanding or perception that is not based on reality; an apparition or specter.
3. A creation of the imagination or fancy; fantasy.
4. A mental image or representation of a real object.
5. An illusory likeness of something.

1. Conceived or appearing as if conceived by an unrestrained imagination; odd and remarkable; bizarre; grotesque.
2. Fanciful or capricious; such as, people or their ideas or actions.
3. Imaginary or groundless as when something is not based on reality; when something is foolish or irrational: "He had these fantastic fears."
4. Extravagantly fanciful; marvelous.
5. Incredibly great or extreme; exorbitant: "My aunt kept spending fantastic sums of money."
6. Highly unrealistic or impractical; outlandish: "My uncle had a fantastic scheme to make a million dollars betting on sports events in Las Vegas."
7. Informal usage: extraordinarily good: "Last night we had a fantastic meal."

1. Imagination; especially, when extravagant and unrestrained.
2. The forming of mental images; especially, wondrous or strange fancies; imaginative conceptualizing.
3. A mental image; especially, when unreal or fantastic; vision: "She had a nightmare fantasy."
4. In psychology, an imagined or conjured up sequence fulfilling a psychological need; a daydream.
5. A supposition based on no solid foundation; a visionary idea; an illusion: "The man had dreams of Utopias and similar fantasies."
6. An ingenious or fanciful thought, design, or invention.
7. In literature, an imaginative or fanciful work; especially, one dealing with supernatural or unnatural events or characters: "Edgar Allen Poe wrote many stories about fantasies of horror.
8. Etymology: "illusory appearance", from Old French fantasie, from Latin phantasia, from Greek phantasia, "appearance, image, perception, imagination"; from phantazesthai, "picture to oneself" from phantos, "visible"; from phainesthai, "appear" in late Greek, "to imagine, have visions".

1. Someone who shows or reveals sacred things.
2. The presiding priest who initiated candidates at the Eleusinian mysteries; hence, one who teaches the mysteries and duties of religion.
3. In ancient Greece, an official expounder of rites of worship and sacrifice.
4. Any interpreter of sacred mysteries or esoteric principles; a mystagogue.
5. Someone who interprets and explains obscure and mysterious matters; especially, sacred doctrines or mysteries.
6. An interpreter of events: someone who explains or comments about everyday matters.

1. Of or belonging to a hierophant or hierophants or their teachings; such as, someone who shows or reveals sacred things.
2. Resembling or characteristic of a presiding priest who initiated candidates at the Eleusinian mysteries; hence, one who teaches the mysteries and duties of religion.

An illusory phenomenon in motion.

The movement of an object that actually occurs is perceived as being different from what the movement really is.

An example is perceiving the wheels of an automobile as moving in a counterclockwise direction when they are, in fact, moving in a clockwise direction.

The stage during which meiosis occurs so that the chromosome number is reduced from diploid to haploid (set of chromosomes containing only one member of each chromosome pair).

Exhibiting only one phase or variation.

Nanophase metals, ceramics and other solids, are made of the same atoms as their more common forms, but the atoms are arranged in nanometer-size clusters, which become the constituent grains, or building blocks, of these new materials.

Whereas the grains in conventional materials range from microns to millimeters in diameter and contain several billion atoms, those in nanophase materials are less than 100 nanometers in diameter and contain fewer than tens of thousands of atoms.

1. Excessive or undue emphasis.
2. An emphasis that is stronger than is thought usual or appropriate.

1. To emphasize excessively.
2. To use excessive emphasis.

1. A name invented for an exhibition of optical illusions: For phantasmagorias to be successful, optical phenomenons were produced chiefly by means of the magic lantern and were first exhibited in London in 1802.
2. Sometimes it was erroneously applied to the mechanism used: A phantasmagoria can be the device which produces such optical illusions, like a stereopticon or a magic lantern.
3. A shifting series or succession of phantasms or imaginary figures: A phantasmagoria can be seen in a dream or fevered condition, as called up by the imagination, or as created by a literary description.
4. Etymology: name of a "magic lantern" exhibition brought to London in 1802 by Philipstal, the name an alteration of a French version of phantasmagorie, said to have been coined in 1801 by French dramatist Louis-Sébastien Mercier, from Greek phantasma, "image" + second element probably a French form of Greek agora, "assembly". This may have been chosen more for the dramatic sound than any literal Greek sense.

The inventor of the word apparently wanted a fancy and startling term, and may have fixed on -agoria without any reference to a Greek lexicon.

1. A fantastic sequence of haphazardly associative imagery: A phantasmagory can be seen in dreams or when in a fever in which scenes are constantly changing and are composed of numerous elements.
2. Fantastic imagery as represented in art: Jill went to an art museum where paintings of phantasmagories were on display by many well-known painters.

1. Pertaining to or of the nature of a phantasm; unreal; illusory; spectral.
2. Like or being a phantom.