as in imaginary
not real and existing only in the imagination
phantasmal fears that have prevented her from living a normal life
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Recent Examples of phantasmal
Beyond that, all apparent structures are merely phantasmal.
—
Big Think, 27 Oct. 2025
Big Think, 27 Oct. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for phantasmal
Adjective
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And so the super, super devoted fans really do know each other and really are jockeying with each other for position in a way that feels both real and imaginary.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
9 Apr. 2026
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No borders and a thin blue line Viewing the Earth from space, White highlights, drives home that the borders that mark our maps are largely imaginary.—
Jackie Wattles,
CNN Money,
8 Apr. 2026
Adjective
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Meanwhile, Pierce Brosnan — who played the fictional agent with a license to kill in four films in the '90s — is open-minded about reprising his role.—
Stephanie Sengwe,
PEOPLE,
10 Apr. 2026
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In the episode, detectives Vincent Riley (Reid Scott) and Theo Walker (David Ajala) chase the shooters through the Brooklyn Museum, a stand-in for the show’s fictional Atlas Museum of Art.—
Leigh Anne Miller,
ARTnews.com,
10 Apr. 2026
Adjective
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But the most important sighting of the mythical Stravinskian fowl might be the revival of Dance Theatre of Harlem’s 1982 version, migrating back to New York for the first time in more than twenty years.—
Hilton Als,
New Yorker,
10 Apr. 2026
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The poem tells the story of the seduction of a sixteen-year-old girl by the watermonster, a mythical figure, weaving together themes of place, identity, trauma, and transformation.—
Patrick Dundon,
JSTOR Daily,
9 Apr. 2026
Adjective
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Investigators allege Gonzalez wrote checks to herself from HOA accounts over an extended period and concealed the thefts by creating fictitious invoices and false ledger entries.—
Sarah Rumpf-Whitten,
FOXNews.com,
8 Apr. 2026
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One requires election records to be maintained for 22 months, while the other prohibits procuring, casting or tabulating false, fictitious or fraudulent ballots.—
CBS News,
CBS News,
29 Mar. 2026
Adjective
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Peter [Merry] likes to use is that, when a caterpillar is becoming a butterfly, new ‘imaginal cells’ emerge.—
Big Think,
Big Think,
7 Aug. 2025
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With one technique, for example—called imaginal exposure—you might be asked to visualize the process of going to the airport, boarding the plane, and experiencing a bad bout of turbulence.—
Angela Haupt,
TIME,
10 May 2024
Adjective
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Instead of small neighborhood stores with limited inventory, Marcus and Blank imagined warehouse-sized spaces filled with everything homeowners or contractors might need — from lumber and drywall to appliances and lighting.—
Alexandria Mansfield,
USA Today,
15 Apr. 2026
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Piech’s experience suggests that Sora videos could activate spatial memory, meaning that Sora videos also tripped up the brain’s more fundamental systems for sorting real from imagined.—
Tim Requarth,
Longreads,
9 Apr. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Phantasmal.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/phantasmal. Accessed 18 Apr. 2026.
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