The Collaborative International Dictionary
Fanciful \Fan"ci*ful\, a.
Full of fancy; guided by fancy, rather than by reason and experience; whimsical; as, a fanciful man forms visionary projects.
Conceived in the fancy; not consistent with facts or reason; abounding in ideal qualities or figures; as, a fanciful scheme; a fanciful theory.
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Curiously shaped or constructed; as, she wore a fanciful headdress.
Gather up all fancifullest shells.
--Keats.Syn: Imaginative; ideal; visionary; capricious; chimerical; whimsical; fantastical; wild.
Usage: Fanciful, Fantastical, Visionary. We speak of that as fanciful which is irregular in taste and judgment; we speak of it as fantastical when it becomes grotesque and extravagant as well as irregular; we speak of it as visionary when it is wholly unfounded in the nature of things. Fanciful notions are the product of a heated fancy, without any tems are made up of oddly assorted fancies, aften of the most whimsical kind; visionary expectations are those which can never be realized in fact. -- Fan"ci*ful*ly, adv. - Fan"ci*ful*ness, n.
Wiktionary
n. The quality of being fanciful.
Usage examples of "fancifulness".
Every one really educated in science and philosophy, and familiar with the physiological conditions and literary history of mythology in the other nations of the world, will plainly perceive the intrinsic fancifulness and falsity of the belief, at the same time that he easily accounts for its rise and prevalence.
The event acquitted her of all the fancifulness, and all the selfishness of imaginary complaints.