fancy

fancy, the power of conception and representation in artistic expression (such as through the use of figures of speech by a poet). The term is sometimes used as a synonym for imagination, especially in the sense of the power of conceiving and giving artistic form to that which is not existent, known, or experienced. When the term fancy is treated as a synonym of conceit, it is defined as the conceiving power that concerns itself with imagery, such as figures of speech and details of a decorative design.

The concepts of fancy and imagination have always been closely related, but at least since the Middle Ages distinctions have been made between the two. In some countries, such as Italy and Germany, fancy was associated with creativity and was considered a higher or greater quality than imagination. In England, John Dryden, Sir Joshua Reynolds, David Hume, and others set forth views of the differences, generally giving imagination a broader and more important role than fancy. For most, however, the terms were virtually synonymous until the Romantic period of the late 18th and early 19th century, when Samuel Taylor Coleridge stated the theory that has had the most lasting influence. According to Coleridge, imagination is the faculty associated with creativity and the power to shape and unify, while fancy, dependent on and inferior to imagination, is merely “associative.”

The word is from the Middle English fantsy, meaning “imagination” or “mental image,” which is ultimately from the Greek phantázein, meaning “to make visible” or “present to the mind.”