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
  • Tipping takes the notion of a spiral in football and runs with it, creating some of the film’s most hallucinatory effects in the process.
    Jim Hemphill, IndieWire, 22 Sep. 2025
  • Campaigns can be hallucinatory affairs, and this one was full of bizarre moments.
    Chris Megerian, Fortune, 19 Sep. 2025
Adjective
  • Her writing is surreal and inventive, always.
    Bryan West, USA Today, 3 Oct. 2025
  • Earlier this week, Anderson made his womenswear debut at Dior, where footwear codes turned equally surreal — from oversized rosette mules to feather-like embellishments.
    Maggie Clancy, Footwear News, 3 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • Yet these successes were at best partial, and perhaps illusory.
    JENNIFER KAVANAGH, Foreign Affairs, 30 Sep. 2025
  • Everyone has their own analogy to describe Labour’s illusory power.
    Sam Knight, New Yorker, 21 Sep. 2025
Adjective
  • The Bridge once again hosted a fashion week party in its Milan digs, with the set designed to take guests on an imaginary journey along the Tyrrhenian coast.
    Martino Carrera, Footwear News, 29 Sep. 2025
  • Soilonic is trying to make a digital token that isn’t just imaginary money.
    Alexandra Harrell, Sourcing Journal, 24 Sep. 2025
Adjective
  • The winning formula had viewers returning to the show's fictional Louisiana town long after Edward and Bella had their happily ever after.
    Matt Cabral, Entertainment Weekly, 4 Oct. 2025
  • Does their fictional status matter?
    Dipangkar Dutta, The Conversation, 3 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • Garcia-Hernandez allegedly has convictions for giving fictitious information, evading arrest, driving while intoxicated and fleeing police.
    Lauren Villagran, USA Today, 26 Sep. 2025
  • Supervisors Janet Nguyen and Don Wagner raised concerns at the board’s Tuesday meeting about fictitious registrations following recent news of a dog that was registered to vote in two recent state elections and a lawsuit by the federal government over noncitizen voter records.
    Claire Wang, Oc Register, 24 Sep. 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 6 Oct. 2025.

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