phantasm

American  

[fan-taz-uhm] / ˈfæn tæz əm /

Sometimes fantasm

noun

1. an apparition or specter.

   Synonyms:

   vision, ghost

2. a creation of the imagination or fancy; fantasy.

3. a mental image or representation of a real object.

4. an illusory likeness of something.

   Synonyms:

   illusion, hallucination

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phantasm British  

/ ˈfæntæzəm /

noun

1. a phantom

2. an illusory perception of an object, person, etc

3. (in the philosophy of Plato) objective reality as distorted by perception

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Related Words

See apparition.

Other Word Forms

• phantasmal adjective
• phantasmally adverb

Etymology

Origin of phantasm

First recorded in 1175–1225; from Latin phantasma, from Greek phántasma “image, vision” (akin to phantázein “to bring before the mind”); replacing Middle English fantesme, from Old French, from Latin as above

Example Sentences

David Hume, the 18th Century philosopher, described it as “the phantasm of the senses.”

From Salon • Nov. 16, 2024

Martin Riker’s novel “The Guest Lecture” begins when a faltering academic conjures up an imaginary phantasm of the early-20th-century economist John Maynard Keynes.

From Washington Post • Jan. 19, 2023

A hellish phantasm of a doe-human hybrid that will definitely stalk and kill you in a dream tonight?

From The Guardian • Aug. 12, 2019

“It’s like a gargoyle with weird green eyes that pulls on my hair or nibbles my ear”—he jerked his head away and smiled reprovingly at the phantasm.

From The New Yorker • Mar. 11, 2019

This position in the orchestra, but putative, conceived as a feint to draw me away from my fellows so that rogues might throw me in chains—this phantasm might now be conjured to solidity.

From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson