variants
or phantasmagorical
as in hallucinatory
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Recent Examples of phantasmagoric
Parker Finn's directorial debut not only lives up to the hype but also delivers a campy and absurd exploration of the transference of generational trauma — pulling off some impressive jump scares and one hell of a phantasmagorical ending.
—
Steven Thrash, Entertainment Weekly, 19 Oct. 2025
The new film tries to connect its phantasmagorical elements to regular middle-class lives, but the attempt serves both aspects poorly.
—Richard Brody, New Yorker, 18 Sep. 2025
Steven Thrash, Entertainment Weekly, 19 Oct. 2025
The new film tries to connect its phantasmagorical elements to regular middle-class lives, but the attempt serves both aspects poorly.
—Richard Brody, New Yorker, 18 Sep. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for phantasmagoric
Adjective
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Sam Levinson’s hallucinatory high school drama Euphoria was renewed for a third season back in 2022, though its future remained uncertain for some time.—
Radhika Seth,
Vogue,
17 Oct. 2025
-
Harwicz’s novels are more hallucinatory than supernatural—but a more provocative distinction between her books and others in this semi-subgenre is that, for her characters, motherhood does not cause animal rage and instability so much as instantiate them.—
Jessica Winter,
New Yorker,
8 Oct. 2025
Adjective
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Over the last few months, there’s been a surge of similar and even more surreal edits.—
Kieran Press-Reynolds,
Pitchfork,
24 Oct. 2025
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This aerial perspective provides a surreal view of the otherworldly environment.—
Gwen Nicol,
Travel + Leisure,
22 Oct. 2025
Adjective
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Registration requirements today are largely illusory, with huge swaths of the non-citizen population exempt from registration and carry requirements.—
Robert Alexander,
MSNBC Newsweek,
14 Oct. 2025
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But even if that purported lunar companion proves illusory, this new method of tracking down mysterious sources of unexplained material around giant exoplanets could become a definitive pathway for future exomoon finds.—
Nola Taylor Tillman,
Scientific American,
13 Oct. 2025
Adjective
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Voyager 1's approximate position lies half way along the imaginary line connecting these two stellar giants.—
Anthony Wood,
Space.com,
25 Oct. 2025
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Not all the scares and frights and bumps in the night are imaginary on Halloween.—
Katia Hetter,
CNN Money,
24 Oct. 2025
Adjective
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First, and perhaps most obvious, the fictional thriller draws inspiration from the Manson Family's home invasion and murder of Sharon Tate and her friends, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger and Wojciech Frykowski, as well as Steven Parent, who was visiting the home's caretaker.—
Stephanie Sengwe,
PEOPLE,
25 Oct. 2025
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The Heart of the Ocean may be fictional, but its legend feels real—modeled loosely on the Hope Diamond.—
Lilah Ramzi,
Vogue,
25 Oct. 2025
Adjective
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Of course, close animal encounters aren't always fictitious.—
Kelli Bender,
PEOPLE,
21 Oct. 2025
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The Half Moon Bay weigh-off began in 1974, when the California town barely edged out Circleville, Ohio, in an amiable contest for the fictitious title of pumpkin capital of the world.—
Jennifer Borresen,
USA Today,
19 Oct. 2025
Adjective
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The fantasy of endless space is what matters, a great chimeric promise, this production understands, that both sustains the nation and goes unfulfilled.—
Jackson McHenry,
Vulture,
16 Oct. 2025
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Advertisement But this victory proved chimerical.—
Time,
Time,
12 Sep. 2025
Adjective
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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
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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
Cite this Entry
“Phantasmagoric.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/phantasmagoric. Accessed 29 Oct. 2025.
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