variants
also fantasm
1
as in illusion
a conception or image created by the imagination and having no objective reality
frightened by the phantasms of his own making
Synonyms & Similar Words
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
2
as in apparition
the soul of a dead person thought of especially as appearing to living people
believed that she'd seen the phantasm of her father on the anniversary of his death
Synonyms & Similar Words
Examples Sentences
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Recent Examples of phantasm
The phantasm jeers at me in this lecture theatre.
—
Tega Oghenechovwen, Longreads, 10 Aug. 2020
There, like enormous catcher’s mitts, the detectors lie in wait for extremely rare collisions between one of these lumbering phantasms and an ordinary atom.
—Rachel Courtland, IEEE Spectrum, 1 May 2014
But eventually, the duo turned the phantasm into solid logic.
—Quanta Magazine, 15 July 2021
Southern lawmakers baselessly claimed Black men were lynched for raping White women -- a phantasm that still haunts Black men -- and asserted laws governing lynchings were best left to the states.
—Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN, 27 May 2021
See all Example Sentences for phantasm 
Tega Oghenechovwen, Longreads, 10 Aug. 2020
There, like enormous catcher’s mitts, the detectors lie in wait for extremely rare collisions between one of these lumbering phantasms and an ordinary atom.
—Rachel Courtland, IEEE Spectrum, 1 May 2014
But eventually, the duo turned the phantasm into solid logic.
—Quanta Magazine, 15 July 2021
Southern lawmakers baselessly claimed Black men were lynched for raping White women -- a phantasm that still haunts Black men -- and asserted laws governing lynchings were best left to the states.
—Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN, 27 May 2021
See all Example Sentences for phantasm
Recent Examples of Synonyms for phantasm
Noun
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Part of the show’s magic is that performers can literally be anybody or anything and the listener completes the illusion with their mind’s eye.Tim Greiving, Los Angeles Times, 12 Dec. 2024
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That illusion is enough to fool even a lie detector.Dmitry Mishunin, Forbes, 10 Dec. 2024
Noun
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Our hopes for the power of small transformations may be misplaced, while the power of the sudden apparition—The drones are here!Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 22 Dec. 2024
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La Virgen had made apparitions to Juan Diego between Dec. 9-12, 1531 on Mexico City’s hill of Tepeyac in between tending to an ailing uncle.Jose R. Gonzalez, The Arizona Republic, 12 Dec. 2024
Noun
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After an overtime Super Bowl win, a star tight end kissed his girlfriend, the world's most successful pop star, as confetti flew—the stuff dreams are made of.Gord Magill, Newsweek, 22 Dec. 2024
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Elon Musk may have dreams of widespread autonomous road car use as well, and Croatian company Verne is following suit, but that doesn’t solve the problem of congested roads.James Morris, Forbes, 21 Dec. 2024
Noun
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Kelly Clarkson isn’t visiting any ghosts of Christmas past this holiday season.Latoya Gayle, People.com, 20 Dec. 2024
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This lounge has custom drinks with the best names (my favorite was Happily Never After), and every corner has been themed to the classic Disney attraction, from the wallpaper with eyes to the hitchhiking ghosts in the mirror.Kimberly Holland, Southern Living, 19 Dec. 2024
Noun
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As the season closed, Kat returned to her time and said goodbye to a vision of Thomas, thinking that he had been shot dead, but then Jacob appeared and revealed that Thomas survived.Vlada Gelman, TVLine, 25 Dec. 2024
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Changing the light's polarization characteristics in this manner mimics things found in nature, like the ridiculously sophisticated and specialized vision of the mantis shrimp.New Atlas, New Atlas, 24 Dec. 2024
Noun
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The Wizard of Oz Effect In the movie The Wizard of Oz, there’s a scene where the protagonist, Dorothy, and her band of misfits are seeking the great and powerful Oz, an amorphous wizard who appears as a phantom atop an explosion of smoke.Steve Tengler, Forbes, 11 Dec. 2024
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Ghosts has slowly been expanding its world over four seasons to introduce its stalwart spirits to a whole host of new phantoms.Katie Campione, Deadline, 5 Dec. 2024
Noun
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With scary precision, the playwright captures the delusion that roots itself in families who use faith to control.Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter, 13 Dec. 2024
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Corcoran is under the paranoid delusion that prison guards are torturing him with sound waves.Kristine Phillips, The Indianapolis Star, 6 Dec. 2024
Noun
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Four centuries after Galileo, the United States has become an epicenter of unreality.Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, Sun Sentinel, 25 Nov. 2024
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Through its official media, ISIS stoked support around the world for its vivid unreality—the Salafi jihadist utopia—and presented a comprehensive and exactingly consistent picture of what life there was supposedly like.Charlie Winter, Foreign Affairs, 31 Jan. 2017
Thesaurus Entries Near phantasm
Cite this Entry
“Phantasm.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/phantasm. Accessed 30 Dec. 2024.
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