fantasticize

English

Alternative forms

• fantasticise

Etymology

From fantastic +‎ -ize.

Verb

fantasticize (third-person singular simple present fantasticizes, present participle fantasticizing, simple past and past participle fantasticized)

1. To make fantastic; to use the imagination to embellish.
   • 1979, Parker Rossman, Hospice: Creating New Models of Care for the Terminally Ill, page 5:

     By fantasticizing death we deny it once again.

   • 1983, Mohammad Khalifa, The sublime Qur'ān and orientalism, page xiv:

     The social and personal behaviour of Muslim men, women and societies as they are encountered in the West could very well be different from the way it is depicted in films or fantasticized in novels, and sometimes even in textbooks.

   • 1999, Voices: The Wisconsin Review of African Literatures:

     In performing this fantasticizing operation on language, embroiderers, like calligraphers, must keep in mind that their work is conducted in the liminal region between the sacred and profane.

   • 2015, Ib Johansen, Walking Shadows: Reflections on the American Fantastic and American Grotesque from Washington Irving to the Postmodern Era:

     History itself is fantasticized, or it could be said that it is somehow contaminated by its adhesive contact with fantastic.

2. Synonym of fantasize
   • 1963, Wano Achmeteli, Judge Ayrapetov's laws, page 1:

     The people of the town gave the matter a lot of thought, really "fantasticized" over it for a long time, and finally decided to open the cabaret on the right corner of the Promenade.

   • 1995, Theodor Fontane, William L. Zwiebel, The Stechlin, page 253:

     He doesn't have any false pretensions, he's straightforward, no fantasticizing, but full of mood.

   • 2017, Clarice Lispector, “Daydream and Drunkenness of a Young Lady”, in Complete Stories:

     She put her hand to her forehead to see if she'd come down with fever. That night, until she fell asleep, she fantasticized, fantasticized: for how many minutes?

   • 2018, Adam Daly, The Reins of the Transfinite, page 330:

     And one can substantiate fictions in this sense, just as one can fictionalize or fantasticize facts and things, and for all kinds of different purposes, and at different levels of aetherial abstraction.