phantasmagoric

variants or phantasmagorical

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for phantasmagoric
Adjective
  • The fiscal fiasco was built on the hallucinatory claim that California enjoyed a $97.5 billion surplus.
    U T Editorial Board, San Diego Union-Tribune, 20 June 2025
  • Adding hallucinatory horror and Jenna Elfman, the show continues our Golden Age of Airport Novel Adaptations (see also: Slow Horses, Reacher, Dept. Q).
    Daniel Fienberg, HollywoodReporter, 18 June 2025
Adjective
  • By Robert Kagan The current debate over bombing Iran is surreal.
    Robert Kagan, The Atlantic, 21 June 2025
  • Each puzzle piece features a surreal image, difficult to decipher.
    Joan MacDonald, Forbes.com, 17 June 2025
Adjective
  • Wells’s attempt to hold the two in balance relied on a division between art and politics, but that division is entirely illusory.
    Kamila Shamsie June 20, Literary Hub, 20 June 2025
  • Freedom without effective enforcement is illusory, as history repeatedly demonstrates.
    Ed Gaskin, Boston Herald, 18 June 2025
Adjective
  • Some will retreat from public life, spurning those closest to them in favor of an imaginary narrative woven with these programs.
    Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, 22 June 2025
  • Since its inception, astronomers had busied themselves tracking the apparent movements of the stars, moon and planets relative to an imaginary line running north to south through the observatory, known as a 'meridian'.
    Anthony Wood, Space.com, 22 June 2025
Adjective
  • The Hollywood Reporter can reveal that, under the multiyear deal, IMG Licensing will develop and manage a robust licensing program spanning Maas’s entire fictional universe with the aim of creating new touchpoints for her fervid fan base.
    Lily Ford, HollywoodReporter, 23 June 2025
  • In experiments set up to leave AI models few options and stress-test alignment, top systems from OpenAI, Google, and others frequently resorted to blackmail—and in an extreme case, even allowed fictional deaths—to protect their interests.
    Beatrice Nolan, Fortune, 23 June 2025
Adjective
  • Although it was portrayed as the fictitious Amity island in the film, many of the location sites are still favorite destinations with travelers — less so for the traffic and tourist-averse year-round islanders.
    Rosemary Feitelberg, Footwear News, 27 June 2025
  • Instead, the two lawyers achieved notoriety in 2023 when the judge in the case fined the pair $5,000 for citing six fictitious cases, invented by artificial intelligence software, in a brief to the court.
    Jeff John Roberts, Fortune, 26 June 2025
Adjective
  • Projections of economic gains from major sporting events are typically optimistic, euphoric, chimerical or conjectural.
    Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 19 June 2025
  • 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
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 4 Jul. 2025.

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