Definition of Fanciful

fanciful (adjective) - indulging in or influenced by fancy

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How can fanciful be used in a sentence?

  1. Some of them are clearly kind of fanciful or farcical.

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  2. But somebody thought it was kind of fanciful to talk of fish.

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  3. Or a place in which the fanciful is allowed to commingle with reality.

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  4. When one of the lawyers for BCCI said that Modi's allegations were "fanciful", Justice

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  5. Clare Montgomery QC, for Mr Dewani, dismissed the allegations as "fanciful" and "flimsy"

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  6. The measure was also criticised by Green MP Keith Locke, who said it was "fanciful" for Ms

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  7. Although criticizing the OED smacks of blasphemy, I wince every time I see "fanciful" in it.

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  8. And I've always just found, you know, different-colored glass to be kind of fanciful and playful.

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  9. GSU senior J.D. Koth calls his fanciful shelter, built of crepe myrtle branches, rope and grass, a "hut."

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  10. Strange feelings all over the body, and an indescribable series of seemingly "fanciful" troubles, come on.

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  11. She said it was "fanciful" to believe "12 men, good and true" were allowed to hear all the evidence in an unbiased way.

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  12. Some people -- people like Mrs. Tolman, our vicar's wife -- laugh at her and call her fanciful, but to me she is so real.

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  13. Industrial parks surrounding Hermosillo contain fanciful buildings that feature companies like this Mattel assembly plant.

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  14. The conjecture about societal breakdown in SurvivalBlog that was once castigated as "fanciful" is now sounding quite plausible.

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  15. I recall fanciful commercials on BET portraying Dr. King looking up to President Obama and smiling amid a crowd of mixed Americans.

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  16. Conversation picked up excitedly behind her; those near where she'd climbed the wall called fanciful explanations to friends farther away.

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  17. I listen for the sound of my footsteps as I have done at midnight to the ticking of the death-watch, encouraging a kind of fanciful superstition.

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  18. And she saw that Pitt, while he was enthusiastic and eager, and what she called fanciful, always was true, honest, and firm in what he thought right.

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  19. Talk of Shane Warne coming out of retirement to rescue Australia's ailing Ashes campaign has been dismissed as 'fanciful' by Cricket Australia's chief executive

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  20. Talk of Shane Warne coming out of retirement to rescue Australia's stumbling Ashes campaign is "fanciful", according to Cricket Australia chief James Sutherland.

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  21. "It is kind of fanciful, I suppose, but I like to believe that it is God blowing His breath down on us just to let us know that He is very near and cares for us."

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  22. I applaud this trend; I've long advocated in this column for the return of fanciful, meaningful gift-giving (for example, see my recent post on traditional anniversary gifts).

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  23. And if that never materialized, I think these kind of fanciful scenarios that are sometimes built about who has sympathy and who doesn't -- we need to examine these very closely.

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  24. This 'extended metaphor' idea plays down the ludic quality of the conceit - the inventive, 'fanciful' nature of the concept and the intricate, 'fancified' nature of its expression.

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  25. Nor do I wish to risk any kind of fanciful and precarious speculations as to the manner and the sphere of the authority that is here set forth; only I would keep to one or two plain things.

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  26. Of St. Catharine of Egypt there are vestiges of personal tradition which may perhaps permit the supposition of her having really once existed, as a very lovely, witty, proud, and 'fanciful' girl.

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  27. Bus link plan 'fanciful' - state govt THE state's transport minister has dismissed a proposed bridge and tunnel crossing for Brisbane as "fanciful", saying it would not speed up commuters' journeys.

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  28. "One solution for firms would be to insert a 'fanciful' name in place of a product name in a search engine link that leads to a company-sponsored product Web site, offered Ropes & Gray partner Alan Bennett."

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  29. The significant events of loss in each of the characters lives aren't fully explored or their resultant trauma explained and their actions consequently seem somewhat disproportionate and, let's just say, "fanciful".

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  30. Change does not happen at the waving a magic wand ... that's the very kind of fanciful, factless thinking we've seen in the GOP for a generation (f*%k the facts, the earth is only 6,000 years old and voo-doo economics!).

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  31. But I am often struck, especially in the shorter tales, of which I am now chiefly speaking, with a kind of small ingenuity, a taste for conceits and analogies, which bears more particularly what is called the fanciful stamp.

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  32. "That the government would now, more than four years after it deemed this matter closed, suddenly decide to prosecute Mr. Ashenfelter for crimes that no journalist has ever before been prosecuted is 'fanciful' at best," Kohn argues in the brief.

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  33. I have to admit that I like certain fanciful ideas, and some of these I sort of entertain with just a little more than fictive suspension of disbelief for the sake of a good story, despite their being rather more mystical than my materialist instincts.

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  34. His heart gave a foolish bound, and he turned about half-expecting to meet again the merry eyes under the hood; but saw instead a slender brown boy, in some kind of fanciful page's dress, who thrust a folded paper between his fingers and vanished in the throng.

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  35. My husband was no believer in what he termed my fanciful, speculative theories; yet at the time when his youngest boy and myself lay dangerously ill, and hardly expected to live, I received from him a letter, written in great haste, which commenced with this sentence:

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  36. Halperin claimed that "Jolie's romantic ambitions now run far beyond showbusiness" and finished his article by reporting the "fanciful" speculation that she might even have set her sights on As Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie sue News of the World, will Mail retract story?

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  37. Although the psychologists, as has been already noted, are now little inclined to distinguish between the imagination and the fancy, it remains true that the old distinction between superficial or "fanciful" resemblances, and deeper or "imaginative" likenesses, is a convenient one in lyric poetry.

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  38. Some of the false analogies on which systems of physics were confidently grounded in the time of the Greek philosophers, are such as we now call fanciful, not that the resemblances are not often real, but that it is long since any one has been inclined to draw from them the inferences which were then drawn.

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  39. But look in the corners, in the cracks, look at all those societies that are not industrial, not market-driven, and still very much a part of this world, that have evolved ontologies which you would call fanciful, but the parallels they have with the most advanced rational thought are not to be brushed aside lightly.

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  40. In pretty contrast to the splendid creatures was their young mistress, in her simple morning dress and fur-trimmed hood and mantle, as she stood feeding the tame pets from her hand, calling their fanciful names, laughing at their pranks, and heartily enjoying the winter sunshine, the fresh wind, and the girlish pastime.

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  41. I have called the description of the house "fanciful," but it is really not that, since the old house fell into Abraham Van Nest's hands at a later date, and stood there for over a century, with the poplars, for which it was famous, and the box hedges, in which Susanna had taken such pride, growing more beautiful through the years.

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  42. Above these are executed other scenes, with some vases in imitation of gold, innumerable things of fancy so strange that mortal eye could not picture anything more novel or more beautiful, and certain Etruscan helmets; but one is left confused by the variety and abundance of the conceptions, so beautiful and so fanciful, which issued from their minds.

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  43. On the High Line, the incongruous delight of strolling through a leafy glade three stories above the roaring traffic's boom is made more piquant by the omnipresence of buildings crowded close to both sides of the walkway, especially at those points where it passes beneath a towering new structure and shoots straight through a cavernous old one, recalling the fanciful multilayered Manhattan imagined by illustrators for the turn-of-the-twentieth-century journal King's Views of New York.

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Tips for Using fanciful in a Sentence

You may have an easier time writing sentences with fanciful if you know what words are likely to come before or after it, or simply what words are often found in the same sentence.

Frequent Predecessors

Words that often come before fanciful in sentences. For example: "a fanciful" or "the fanciful"

  • a
  • the
  • and
  • of
  • more
  • too
  • or
  • as
  • this
  • not

Frequent Successors

Words that often come after fanciful in sentences. For example: "fanciful and" or "fanciful ."

  • and
  • .
  • to
  • or
  • as
  • in
  • than
  • names
  • tales
  • theories

Associated Words

Words that aren't necessarily predecessors or successors, but are often found in the same sentence.

  • etymologies
  • etymological
  • whimsical
  • etymology
  • derivation
  • grotesque
  • allegorical
  • creatures
  • tales
  • imagination

Alternate Definitions

  • fanciful (adjective) - not based on fact; unreal; - F.D.Roosevelt
  • fanciful (adjective) - having a curiously intricate quality
  • fanciful (adjective) - full of fancy; guided by fancy, rather than by reason and experience; whimsical
  • fanciful (adjective) - conceived in the fancy; not consistent with facts or reason; abounding in ideal qualities or figures
  • fanciful (adjective) - curiously shaped or constructed
A sentence using fanciful