phantasmagoric

variants or phantasmagorical

Example Sentences

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.
Recent Examples of phantasmagoric 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
  • 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
  • Earl Takefman has experienced AI’s hallucinatory tendencies firsthand.
    Angela Yang, NBC news, 8 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • For Barr, the experience was both surreal and affirming.
    Abby Montanez, Robb Report, 17 Oct. 2025
  • All the parts fit well in this sometimes surreal, sometimes darkly humorous journey into the crumbling mind of a stressed woman.
    Randy Myers, Mercury News, 16 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • 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
  • 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
  • Now draw an imaginary line diagonally through the Dipper's bowl from Dubhe (the upper right star in the bowl) down through Phecda (the lower left star in the bowl) and extend that line downward about twice the distance between those two stars and that will bring you to the vicinity of Cor Caroli.
    Joe Rao, Space.com, 8 Oct. 2025
  • While their mother is not in the picture, Judy seeks guidance from her boss, Alyson (Megan Mullally), and her imaginary friend, Alanis Morissette (voicing herself), who appears to her in the Northern Lights.
    Nellie Andreeva, Deadline, 3 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • Then again, even the fictional boarding school for witches and wizards in the Harry Potter series did not have a production line like Barcelona’s academy.
    Laia Cervelló Herrero, New York Times, 11 Oct. 2025
  • The real John Laroche attended, as well as the fictional one, who was played by Chris Cooper (who later won an Oscar for his portrayal).
    Susan Orlean, New Yorker, 11 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • Nicolas Cage was rumored to be interested in playing Charlie and his fictitious twin, Donald.
    Susan Orlean, New Yorker, 11 Oct. 2025
  • However fictitious, these uplifting moments are currently missing from our real-life news cycle.
    Aramide Tinubu, Variety, 10 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • Advertisement But this victory proved chimerical.
    Time, Time, 12 Sep. 2025
  • Projections of economic gains from major sporting events are typically optimistic, euphoric, chimerical or conjectural.
    Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 19 June 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

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Cite this Entry

“Phantasmagoric.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/phantasmagoric. Accessed 19 Oct. 2025.

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