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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Phantasmagoric

Phantasmagoric \Phan*tas`ma*gor"ic\, a. Of or pertaining to phantasmagoria; phantasmagorial.
--Hawthorne.

Wiktionary
phantasmagoric

a. 1 Characterized by or pertaining to rapid changes in light intensity and colour. 2 Characterized by or pertaining to a dream-like blurring of real and imaginary elements.

WordNet
phantasmagoric

adj. characterized by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtapositions; "a great concourse of phantasmagoric shadows"--J.C.Powys; "the incongruous imagery in surreal art and literature" [syn: phantasmagorical, surreal, surrealistic]

Usage examples of "phantasmagoric".

Indra, from the meanest worm to the supreme Buddha, constitute one fraternal race, by the unavoidable effects of the law of retribution constantly interchanging their residences in a succession of rising and sinking existences, ranging through all the earths, heavens, and hells of the universe, bound by the terrible links of merit and demerit in the phantasmagoric dungeon of births and deaths.

A less zealous, optimistic and dogged individual than he would not have even supposed that, so years after the Hearts had emigrated east from Vegas, that city of all American cities phantasmagoric and insubstantial as a delirium hallucination, there could be any trace, any vestigial memory of them.

It showed a naked man emerging from the sea, backdropped by strange, phantasmagoric shapes among the surf.

The figure of Major Boyette, one of the circus's main attractions, will remain indelibly in the reader's mind as the sort of phantasmagoric entity only possible in SF: “the last surviving POW of the American War, now well over a hundred years old and horribly disfigured,” the major crouches in his tent like an ancient oracular ape, grasping at shattered memories.

The figure of Major Boyette, one of the circus's main attractions, will remain indelibly in the reader's mind as the sort of phantasmagoric entity only possible in SF: "the last surviving POW of the American War, now well over a hundred years old and horribly disfigured," the major crouches in his tent like an ancient oracular ape, grasping at shattered memories.