"flight of fancy" meaning in English

See flight of fancy in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-flight of fancy.ogg Forms: flights of fancy [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun|flights of fancy}} flight of fancy (plural flights of fancy)
  1. (idiomatic) An idea, narrative, suggestion, etc., which is extremely imaginative and which appears to be entirely unrealistic, untrue, or impractical; thinking which is very speculative. Tags: idiomatic Synonyms: daydream, reverie Related terms: chase rainbows, pie in the sky, pipe dream
    Sense id: en-flight_of_fancy-en-noun-Geh4TUD4 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries

Inflected forms

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  "lang_code": "en",
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      "examples": [
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          "ref": "1704, [Jonathan Swift], “Section VIII”, in A Tale of a Tub. […], London: […] John Nutt, […], →OCLC, page 154:",
          "text": "And, whereas the mind of Man, when he gives the Spur and Bridle to his Thoughts, doth never ſtop, but naturally ſallies out into both extreams of High and Low, of Good and Evil, his first Flight of Fancy commonly tranſports Him to Idea's of what is moſt Perfect, finiſhed, and exalted; [...]",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1848, Charles Dickens, chapter 1, in The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain:",
          "text": "Who might not, by a very easy flight of fancy, have believed that everything about him took this haunted tone, and that he lived on haunted ground?",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1939 November 20, “Canadian Secrecy”, in Time:",
          "text": "No German troops were mobilized along Canada's border last week, no Canadian cities had been bombed, and only by the remotest flight of fancy could alarmists see the Dominion as a battleground.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2016, Paul Gooding, Historic Newspapers in the Digital Age, Taylor & Francis, →ISBN, page 183:",
          "text": "Aguilar-Millan et al. published an ambitious flight of fancy which explored the “post-scarcity world” of 2050 in light of technical advancements which they argue will decrease costs to providers until almost everything becomes free to the end user.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An idea, narrative, suggestion, etc., which is extremely imaginative and which appears to be entirely unrealistic, untrue, or impractical; thinking which is very speculative."
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        ],
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) An idea, narrative, suggestion, etc., which is extremely imaginative and which appears to be entirely unrealistic, untrue, or impractical; thinking which is very speculative."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "chase rainbows"
        },
        {
          "word": "pie in the sky"
        },
        {
          "word": "pipe dream"
        }
      ],
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        {
          "word": "daydream"
        },
        {
          "word": "reverie"
        }
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      "tags": [
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
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      "word": "chase rainbows"
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    {
      "word": "pie in the sky"
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        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
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        {
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          "text": "And, whereas the mind of Man, when he gives the Spur and Bridle to his Thoughts, doth never ſtop, but naturally ſallies out into both extreams of High and Low, of Good and Evil, his first Flight of Fancy commonly tranſports Him to Idea's of what is moſt Perfect, finiſhed, and exalted; [...]",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1848, Charles Dickens, chapter 1, in The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain:",
          "text": "Who might not, by a very easy flight of fancy, have believed that everything about him took this haunted tone, and that he lived on haunted ground?",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1939 November 20, “Canadian Secrecy”, in Time:",
          "text": "No German troops were mobilized along Canada's border last week, no Canadian cities had been bombed, and only by the remotest flight of fancy could alarmists see the Dominion as a battleground.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2016, Paul Gooding, Historic Newspapers in the Digital Age, Taylor & Francis, →ISBN, page 183:",
          "text": "Aguilar-Millan et al. published an ambitious flight of fancy which explored the “post-scarcity world” of 2050 in light of technical advancements which they argue will decrease costs to providers until almost everything becomes free to the end user.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
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        "An idea, narrative, suggestion, etc., which is extremely imaginative and which appears to be entirely unrealistic, untrue, or impractical; thinking which is very speculative."
      ],
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) An idea, narrative, suggestion, etc., which is extremely imaginative and which appears to be entirely unrealistic, untrue, or impractical; thinking which is very speculative."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "daydream"
        },
        {
          "word": "reverie"
        }
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      "tags": [
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Download raw JSONL data for flight of fancy meaning in English (3.1kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-15 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (8a39820 and 4401a4c). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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