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Aug 22, 2024
This week’s theme
Adjectives

This week’s words
evanescent
splendiferous
ontic
phantasmagorical
consummate

phantasmagorical
Illustration: Anu Garg + AI

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

phantasmagorical

PRONUNCIATION:
(fan-taz-muh-GOR-i-kuhl)

MEANING:
adjective: Illusory; strange; deceptive; imaginary; surreal; hallucinatory.

ETYMOLOGY:
From French fantasmagorie, from fantasme (phantasm), from Latin phantasia, from Greek phantasia, perhaps combined with Greek agora (assembly). Earliest documented use: 1828.

USAGE:
“Trump’s phantasmagorical visions of marauding immigrants are part of a genre in which immigration and race are intermingled.”
Evan Osnos; The Fearful and The Frustrated; The New Yorker; Aug 31, 2015.
[Also see this.]

See more usage examples of phantasmagorical in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
My stories run up and bite me in the leg -- I respond by writing them down -- everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off. -Ray Bradbury, science-fiction writer (22 Aug 1920-2012)

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