fantastic
Americanadjective
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extraordinarily good; excellent.
a fantastic restaurant.
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Also fantastical
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conceived or appearing as if conceived by an unrestrained imagination; odd and remarkable; bizarre; grotesque.
The most fantastic rock formations are visible from the high plateau of the park’s rim trail.
Artists rendered fantastic designs in the margin of the manuscript.
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fanciful or capricious, as persons or their ideas or actions.
We never know what that fantastic creature will say next.
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imaginary or groundless in not being based on reality; foolish or irrational.
You can’t let these fantastic fears of yours control your life.
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extravagantly fanciful; marvelous.
The scenery and lighting they created for the dream sequences are truly fantastic!
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incredibly great or extreme; exorbitant.
The rich are spending fantastic sums of money, even in this economy.
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highly unrealistic or impractical.
They hatched a fantastic scheme to make a million dollars betting on horse races.
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adjective
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strange, weird, or fanciful in appearance, conception, etc
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created in the mind; illusory
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extravagantly fanciful; unrealistic
fantastic plans
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incredible or preposterous; absurd
a fantastic verdict
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informal very large or extreme; great
a fantastic fortune
he suffered fantastic pain
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informal very good; excellent
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of, given to, or characterized by fantasy
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not constant; capricious; fitful
given to fantastic moods
noun
Related Words
See bizarre.
Other Word Forms
- fantasticality noun
- fantastically adverb
- fantasticalness noun
- superfantastic adjective
- superfantastically adverb
- unfantastic adjective
- unfantastically adverb
Etymology
Origin of fantastic
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English fantastik “pertaining to the imaginative faculty,” from Medieval Latin fantasticus, variant of Late Latin phantasticus, from Greek phantastikós “able to present the appearence (of something),” derivative of phantázein “to make present to the eye or mind” (akin to phānós “light, bright,” phaínein “to bring to light, cause to appear”) + -tikos -tic
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.
We have become fantastic at interacting with surfaces, all while our data is harvested and our attention monetized behind the veil of user-friendliness.
From Slate • Apr. 4, 2026
There’s some things that are fantastic about it, because in many ways, you’re much better than you were when you were a kid.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 26, 2026
"You reach the North Sea and it's really emotional, there are people in tears. It's really quite a fantastic experience."
From BBC • Mar. 25, 2026
Events like the Black Sound Gala at the Whitworth Art Gallery, she says, have helped with "amplifying and highlighting the fantastic black creatives in the city".
From BBC • Mar. 24, 2026
This completely fantastic interaction has not left me a lot of hope for the conversation in which I ask her to come to therapy with me.
From "Sparrow" by Sarah Moon
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.
