phantasmal

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English

WOTD – 17 April 2024

Etymology

From phantasm or phantasma (“phantasm”) +‎ -al (suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’ forming adjectives).[1]

Pronunciation

Adjective

phantasmal (comparative more phantasmal, superlative most phantasmal)

  1. Of or pertaining to, or having the characteristics of, a phantasm (“something seen but having no physical reality”); imaginary, unreal.
    Synonyms: phantasmatic, phantasmatical, phantasmic, phantasmical, phantomatic
    • 1813, Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Canto VII”, in Queen Mab; , London: P. B. Shelley, , →OCLC, page 98:
      The matter of which dreams are made / Not more endowed with actual life / Than this phantasmal portraiture / Of wandering human thought.
    • 1910 October 1, G K Chesterton, “The Queer Feet”, in The Innocence of Father Brown, London, New York, N.Y.: Cassell and Company, published 1911, →OCLC, page 80:
      Mr. Audley, the chairman, was an amiable, elderly man who still wore Gladstone collars; he was a kind of symbol of all that phantasmal and yet fixed society.
    • 1916 December 29, James Joyce, chapter II, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, N.Y.: B W. Huebsch, →OCLC, page 93:
      e had heard about him the constant voices of his father and of his masters, urging him to be a gentleman above all things and urging him to be a good catholic above all things. […] And it was the din of all these hollowsounding voices that made him halt irresolutely in the pursuit of phantoms. He gave them ear only for a time but he was happy only when he was far from them, beyond their call, alone or in the company of phantasmal comrades.
    • 1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 1: Telemachus]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, , →OCLC, part I , page 10:
      Her secrets: old feather fans, tassled dancecards, powdered with musk, a gaud of amber beads in her locked drawer. […] Phantasmal mirth, folded away: muskperfumed.
    1. Of or pertaining to, or having the characteristics of, a phantom (“apparition or ghost”); ghostly, spectral.
      Synonyms: see Thesaurus:ghostly
    2. (parapsychology) Of or pertaining to, or having the characteristics of, a phantasm (“perception or vision of a living or dead person who is not physically present, often through telepathy”).

Alternative forms

Derived terms

Translations

References

  1. ^ “phantasmal, adj.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, July 2023; “phantasmal, adj.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

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