fantasia
Americannoun
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fantasias
plural
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Music.
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a composition in fanciful or irregular form or style.
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a potpourri of well-known airs arranged with interludes and florid embellishments.
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something considered to be unreal, weird, exotic, or grotesque.
noun
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any musical composition of a free or improvisatory nature
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a potpourri of popular tunes woven freely into a loosely bound composition
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another word for fancy
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of fantasia
From Italian, dating back to 1715–25; see origin at fantasy
Explanation
A fantasia is a partially improvised, free flowing piece of music. Familiar tunes are often included in a fantasia. You might hear a fantasia at the symphony, scattered with well-known bits of folk songs. Most fantasias are a bit unpredictable, since they tend to use improvisation and an unstructured style, with classical fantasias sometimes mixing fast sections with much slower ones. Fantasia is also the title of the third animated Disney film, made in 1940 and featuring cartoons set to eight pieces of classical music. The Greek root of both fantasia and fantasy is phantasia — "imagination or appearance."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The movie, only barely delving into its subject’s troubling complexity, ends up flashy and glib, a loosely fact-based fantasia that can’t transcend its own shallowness.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 24, 2026
In 2019, then-Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp said City were in "fantasia land", where they could buy whoever they wanted.
From BBC ● May 19, 2026
It’s the kind of sumptuous aural fantasia Ms. Ware has perfected, and it’s emblematic of “Superbloom” as a whole.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 21, 2026
Ernesto’s pick: Amor Elefante, “Amigas” I dare you not to smile when you listen to “Hipnótico,” the synth-pop fantasia that kicks off “Amigas,” a welcome return to action for Buenos Aires quartet Amor Elefante.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 16, 2025
The pianist flourishes with the waltz, or a general fantasia of the opera on every and all occasions.
From Stars of the Opera by Mabel Wagnalls
Hence her association with the British artist Rogan Brown, well represented here, whose spectacular laser-cut fantasias suggest Elizabethan lace on steroids.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 19, 2026
Its music videos, which had heretofore been so art-school obscure that MTV barely played them, were now high-budget fantasias with Stipe front and center, undulating like a Robert Longo painting come to life.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 5, 2024
Fusing the bare-bones folk of his beloved 2015 album Carrie & Lowell to the grand, orchestral fantasias of his earlier work, Javelin saw Sufjan Stevens reach new heights.
From BBC ● Dec. 27, 2023
In the mustard gallery of the mini-show “The Witch’s Cradle,” we meet women artists who used masquerades or fantasias to evade or deconstruct male stereotypes.
From New York Times ● Apr. 30, 2022
From wondering what was wrong with my author I passed away from him altogether, and presently found myself spinning, as it were, fantasias on life in human terms.
From The Tower of Oblivion by Oliver [pseud.] Onions
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
