fanciful Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. adjective satellite indulging in or influenced by fancy
    notional.
    • a fanciful mind
    • all the notional vagaries of childhood
  2. adjective satellite not based on fact; unreal
    notional; imaginary.
    • the falsehood about some fanciful secret treaties"- F.D.Roosevelt
    • a small child's imaginary friends
    • to create a notional world for oneself
  3. adjective satellite having a curiously intricate quality
    • a fanciful pattern with intertwined vines and flowers

WordNet

Fan"ci*ful adjective
Definitions
  1. Full of fancy; guided by fancy, rather than by reason and experience; whimsical; as, a fanciful man forms visionary projects.
  2. Conceived in the fancy; not consistent with facts or reason; abounding in ideal qualities or figures; as, a fanciful scheme; a fanciful theory.
  3. Curiously shaped or constructed; as, she wore a fanciful headdress.
    Gather up all fancifullest shells. Keats.
    Syn. -- Imaginative; ideal; visionary; capricious; chimerical; whimsical; fantastical; wild. -- Fanciful, Fantastical, Visionary. We speak of that as fanciful which is irregular in taste and judgment; we speak of it as fantastical when it becomes grotesque and extravagant as well as irregular; we speak of it as visionary when it is wholly unfounded in the nature of things. Fanciful notions are the product of a heated fancy, without any tems are made up of oddly assorted fancies, aften of the most whimsical kind; visionary expectations are those which can never be realized in fact. -- Fan"ci*ful*ly, adv. -Fan"ci*ful*ness, n.

Webster 1913