phantasmagoric

variants or phantasmagorical

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for phantasmagoric
Adjective
  • There are private planes and limos and cocaine and fireworks and dancing and morning-after IV drips; Baker charges through these scenes in an almost hallucinatory frenzy, sweeping us along the way that Ani herself has been swept along.
    Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 2 Mar. 2025
  • Wander through hallucinatory landscapes in a genre-defying melding of video games, short film, and generative art.
    Matt Grobar, Deadline, 22 Jan. 2025
Adjective
  • Most capture mundane experiences, impressive in their hyperrealistic way, but some are sublime, or surreal, or place you in a morally challenging position.
    Anna Russell, The New Yorker, 14 Mar. 2025
  • With stages set up in and around the Old West buildings that dot the grounds, a movie set where Nelson filmed his 1984 Western Red Headed Stranger, the vibe at Luck Reunion is both cinematic and surreal.
    Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rolling Stone, 14 Mar. 2025
Adjective
  • The illusion of a causal connection People tend to form illusory correlations between objects, people, occurrences or behaviors, particularly when those things are infrequently encountered.
    Julia Standefer, The Conversation, 14 Mar. 2025
  • Here, the New York scenes are far too glum to coexist with the breezy maneuvering that’s happening in the present, and giving the lead an illusory disabled brother to talk to from time to time feels like the worst version of a wannabe Shyamalan twist.
    Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone, 24 Feb. 2025
Adjective
  • After the war, that technology, developed by a painfully pretentious guru named Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci), was sold to the public as a way of keeping them sedated and immersed in imaginary worlds.
    Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 14 Mar. 2025
  • And now a question for a future newsletter: Do the kids in your life have imaginary friends?
    Anna North, Vox, 13 Mar. 2025
Adjective
  • In this mostly fictional version, the reclusive Omara has to decide whether or not to come back from retirement and record with her old colleagues from the fervent Cuban years, thus confronting those ghosts.
    Chris Jones, New York Daily News, 20 Mar. 2025
  • Here are our 25 favorite pairs of fictional best friends from movies and TV.
    Kevin Jacobsen, EW.com, 19 Mar. 2025
Adjective
  • Morgan & Morgan, the firm that puts up those annoying Philly billboards, was fined after one of their lawyers admitted to using an AI program that generated fictitious case citations in a legal filing.
    Isaac Avilucea, Axios, 26 Feb. 2025
  • Putin cannot refuse a ceasefire, without losing the fictitious moral high ground.
    Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, 11 Mar. 2025
Adjective
  • 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
  • Meanwhile, Kilgore, his dream of fame approaching, also sees its chimerical agonies.
    Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 14 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 31 Mar. 2025.

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