adjective
fantastic
Excellent, or strikingly imaginative and removed from ordinary reality.
Where it comes from
Fantastic ordinarily means excellent, or strikingly imaginative and removed from ordinary reality. Fantastic came through French and Late Latin from Greek phantastikos, associated with forming or presenting images to the mind. It belongs to the same historical family as fantasy and phantom. What existed only in imagination could seem unreal, strange, extravagant, or incredible.
How the meaning developed
Incredible size or quality then made fantastic an intensifier and, in familiar speech, a word of enthusiastic approval.
Sources
Definitions adapted from Open English WordNet where applicable. License and attribution. Word-history text comes from Lexifour’s sourced social research; pages are assembled automatically, not individually fact-checked on every update.
Updated 2026-10-05. Report a correction.