phantasmagoric

variants or phantasmagorical

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for phantasmagoric
Adjective
  • His voice and guitar strums spark a hallucinatory sequence in which different times collide.
    Nick Romano, EW.com, 17 Apr. 2025
  • Alcock has appeared in seven total episodes of House of the Dragon playing a young Rhaenyra Targaryen before being replaced by Emma D’Arcy as her older counterpart, reappearing only in a hallucinatory Daemon dream sequence.
    Paul Tassi, Forbes.com, 28 May 2025
Adjective
  • To close out its surreal set, the crew from the cult-favorite kids show Yo Gabba Gabba! brought out a cast of characters both human (Thundercat, Portugal.
    Rebecca Milzoff, Billboard, 9 June 2025
  • Premiering as one of the opening-night shorts at this year’s festival, this Canadian title showcases the duo’s signature handcrafted puppetry and surreal storytelling.
    Jamie Lang, Variety, 7 June 2025
Adjective
  • The viewer doesn’t hold all that much sway over Stefan’s outcomes, but the illusory nature of free will is part of the point Bandersnatch is trying to make.
    Charles Bramesco, Vulture, 10 Apr. 2025
  • But in the case of Sudan’s current civil war, any hope that negotiations, if they can be started, will result in lasting peace is illusory.
    Mai Hassan, Foreign Affairs, 30 Apr. 2025
Adjective
  • But what were his motivations for the sculptural cut that reduced the body by a third, literally disabling all of the fetish’s functions except for those of its primary feature, the design, thereby intensifying it, endowing it even with an imaginary, almost futuristic acceleration?
    Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Artforum, 1 June 2025
  • Dairy farmers should not be the villains in an imaginary climate change narrative - they should be respected as part of the backbone of our state's rural economy and heritage.
    Mandy Taheri, MSNBC Newsweek, 29 May 2025
Adjective
  • The film takes place in 2020 — yes, that 2020 — in the most visceral way, with the anti-mask local sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) of the fictional Eddington, New Mexico, facing off against the town’s COVID-guideline-advocate mayor, played by Pedro Pascal (the second of his three summer releases).
    Rance Collins, IndieWire, 10 June 2025
  • Standing in for the Duke of Hastings’ fictional Clyvedon Castle in season one, this real-life Baroque masterpiece is located in North Yorkshire, England, and has been in the Howard family for more than three centuries.
    Abby Montanez, Robb Report, 10 June 2025
Adjective
  • That’s the assessment in Ari Aster’s Eddington, which views that collective national trauma through the microcosm of a fictitious New Mexico small town.
    David Rooney, HollywoodReporter, 16 May 2025
  • The trials and tribulations of the fictitious protagonist, however, have precedents.
    Angelica Frey, JSTOR Daily, 9 Apr. 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 18 Jun. 2025.

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