phantasmagoric

variants or phantasmagorical

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for phantasmagoric
Adjective
  • Bizarre happenings ensue: a tense break-in, a mysterious disappearance, many physical altercations, and a hallucinatory trip.
    Justin Chang, New Yorker, 16 May 2025
  • This was against a backdrop of a pandemic that was savaging the moviegoing experience and a streaming war that had gripped studios with the hallucinatory idea that streaming was the only future coming.
    Borys Kit, HollywoodReporter, 14 May 2025
Adjective
  • Cast: Josh Gates Genre: Documentary Rating: TV-14 Pee-Wee As Himself (May 23) Paul Reubens was one of the purest creative minds of his generation, coming from the underground theater scene with Pee-Wee Herman, a capricious manchild who lived in a surreal world of puppets and playthings.
    K. Thor Jensen, PC Magazine, 16 May 2025
  • One surreal instant later, Allan Houston put down a forceful dribble, curled around Dan Majerle as tightly as a stripe on a candy cane and discovered a shaft of light.
    Steven Louis Goldstein, New York Times, 16 May 2025
Adjective
  • But in the case of Sudan’s current civil war, any hope that negotiations, if they can be started, will result in lasting peace is illusory.
    Mai Hassan, Foreign Affairs, 30 Apr. 2025
  • The feeling of openness might be illusory at the very biggest events in tennis, but at least the chasing pack are no longer going into majors resigned to their fate.
    Charlie Eccleshare, New York Times, 28 Apr. 2025
Adjective
  • New York is a realm of fantasy and myth, obsession and resentment, fear and bewilderment for many who’ve never set foot in it; and many who live here also purvey and perpetuate some version of the imaginary city.
    Richard Brody, New Yorker, 10 May 2025
  • The imaginary elements of the story — the witches, and the university — stem from growing up with my father, and reading novels by Julio Verne and Emilio Salgari.
    Ernesto Lechner, Rolling Stone, 10 May 2025
Adjective
  • Ready to swap the real-world drama for a fictional web of secrets and lies?
    Andrea Bartz, People.com, 18 May 2025
  • The kind now best distilled into a fictional massacre in a galaxy far, far away.
    Manuel Betancourt, Los Angeles Times, 17 May 2025
Adjective
  • The two stars of the Emmy-winning 1990s romantic comedy series Northern Exposure, set in the zany fictitious town of Cicely, Alaska, are adding their names to the avalanche of television stars binging their old shows, offering commentary about the storylines and sharing behind-the-scenes tales.
    Jordan Hoffman, EW.com, 6 May 2025
  • Later on, Weekend Update featured a trio of guest appearances from Bowen Yang who resurrected his recurring Chinese trade minister Chen Biao, Emil Wakim and his notes on American patriotism and Sarah Sherman as Jost’s fictitious accountant Dawn Altman.
    Natalie Oganesyan, Deadline, 12 Apr. 2025
Adjective
  • In spite of everything, the setting continues to compel me, as does the puzzle of Flores’s fiction, which frames the South Texas border region as a territory both physical and chimerical.
    David L. Ulin, The Atlantic, 21 Feb. 2025
  • Meanwhile, Kilgore, his dream of fame approaching, also sees its chimerical agonies.
    Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 14 Feb. 2025
Adjective
  • This isn’t callousness or delusive optimism but, rather, a rebellion against the suffocating expectation that the elderly have foreclosed the possibility of joy.
    Hillary Kelly, The New Yorker, 21 Feb. 2024
  • To separate art from its historical framework is futile, and to reject it in an effort to censor past violence is a delusive act of virtue signaling.
    WSJ, WSJ, 5 July 2022
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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Cite this Entry

“Phantasmagoric.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/phantasmagoric. Accessed 23 May. 2025.

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