fanciful

[Eng. fancy; -ful ( 1 ). ] 1. Dictated by or arising in the fancy or imagination; appealing to or pleasing the fancy; wild; as, a fanciful theory. 2. Curiously or extravagantly constructed or shaped; fantastic. "I love a fanciful disorder, And straggling out of rule and order." Lloyd: Familiar Letter of Rhyme. 3. Existing only in the imagination; fancied, imaginary. "Shake at shadows fanciful and vain." Dryden: Lucretius, ii. 4. Guided by the fancy or the imagination rather than by reason. "It seemed to a fanciful view To weep for the buds it had left with regret." Cowper: The Rose. 5. Subject to the influence of fancy; whimsical, capricious, fantastical. "The English are naturally fanciful ."-Add is on. Crabb thus discriminates between fanciful , fantastical , whimsical , and capricious : " Fanciful and fantastical are both employed for persons and things; whimsical and caprice are mostly employed for persons or for what is personal. Fanciful , in regard to persons, is said of that which is irregular in the taste or judgment; fantastical is said of that which violates all propriety, as well as regularity: the former may consist of a simple deviation from rule; the latter is something extravagant. A person may, therefore, sometimes be advantageously fanciful , although he can never be fantastical but to his discredit. Lively minds will be fanciful in the choice of their dre , furniture, or equipage: the affectation of singularity frequently renders people fantastical in their manners as well as their dre . Fanciful is said mostly in regard to errors of opinion or taste; it springs from an aberration of the mind: whimsical is a species of the fanciful in regard to one's likes or dislikes capricious respects errors of temper, or irregularities of feeling. The fanciful does not nece arily imply instability; but the capricious excludes the idea of fixedne . One is fanciful by attaching a reality to that which only pa es in one's own mind; one is whimsical in the inventions of the fancy ; one is capricious by acting and judging without rule or reason in that which admits of both. In application to things, the terms fanciful and fantastical preserve a similar distinction; what is fanciful may be the real and just combination of a well-regulated fancy , or the unreal combination of a distempered fancy ; the fantastical is not only the unreal but the distorted combination of a disordered fancy ." (Crabb: Eng. Synon.) făn-çi-fül-lý, adv. [Eng. fanciful; -ly.] 1. In a fanciful, curious, or fantastical manner; fantastically. "Just as ancient Egyptian wisdom did in hieroglyphic symbols fancifully analogized."- War burton : Divine Le gation , bk. iv., § 14. 2. In a whimsical, capricious, or fantastical manner. IMG:content-1418.png:[blocks in formation] "The fancifulne of some of its imagery does not cool it in the least." - Athenœum. *făn-çi-fỹ, v. i. [Eng. fancy; -fy.] To fancy. făn-çi-le , a. [Eng. fancy ; -le .] Destitute of fancy or imagination, unimaginative; prosaic.