Playing with words

Have fun with 'fantasy'

I love finding out about words. How did they come in to being? Do they have more than one meaning? Can they be spelled differently?

I thought that I would dig in to the word fantasy and looked it up in my big, old Oxford dictionary. Here are some of the things I found.

  • Fantasy can also be spelled ‘phantasy’.
  • If you asked me for the meaning of fantasy I would say something like ‘completely imaginary’. Well, my dictionary gives 8 different meanings and not one of them is quite what I expected, although they are all to do with the imagination in some way or other. What we call a ‘fantasy novel’ should really be called a ‘fantastic novel’.
  • ‘Fantastic’ means ‘existing only in the imagination’ or ‘unreal’, so The Time Wreccas should really be called a ‘fantastic novel’. We mostly use ‘fantastic’ to mean ‘really good’ and I hope you agree that The Time Wreccas and The Time Apprentice are also that!
  • The Greenwich Chronicles could also be called ‘fantastical’, which is another word meaning the same as fantastic.
  • Our English word ‘fantasy’ comes from an old French word ‘fantasie’ or a Latin (ancient Roman) word ‘phantasia’.
  • ‘Phantasy’ seems to have been written in English as early as 1450. That was a long time ago!

What can you find out about ‘fantasy’? What was happening in the world around the year 1450? What other words are similar to ‘fantasy’?

The next word I’m going to look up is magic. I wonder if it has the same meaning that I think it should and where the word comes from?

There are lots of other words to try. Perhaps you could let me know if you find any interesting facts about words that you investigate.

 

 

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