Mind & EmotionGreek → English
Fancy
/ˈfænsi/noun
A liking or whim, or the faculty of imagining things.
The Greek roots
φαντασία
phantasía
appearance, imagination
Literally: “a making visible”
Follow a root:φαντασία4 words
The story of the word
Fancy is fantasy with the middle worn away, a fifteenth-century contraction that then went off on its own; φαντασία meant the appearance a thing makes to the mind, from φαίνειν, to bring to light. English ended with a pair, one word for imagination in the grand sense and one for a passing liking. Coleridge tried to make the split official in 1817, granting imagination the creative power and leaving fancy to shuffle around whatever memory already held.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 15th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
fantasyphantomphenomenondiaphanous
In a sentence
He took a fancy to the smaller boat and bought it that afternoon.
The plan was a fancy until somebody costed it.