Fancy

How to spell fancy

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce fancy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fancy mean?

1. adjectiveElaborate, decorative, or more expensive and refined than the ordinary version.
2. verbTo feel a liking or desire for someone or something.
3. nounA liking, inclination, or passing whim.

Fancy in a sentence

• adjective

  They booked a fancy restaurant for the anniversary dinner.

• verb

  After the long walk they began to fancy a hot cup of tea.

• noun

  The bright red bicycle in the window caught her fancy.

• adjective

  The kitchen came with fancy marble countertops and brass fittings.

• verb

  She did not fancy the long drive home in the rain.

• noun

  He bought the antique clock on a passing fancy.

Where does fancy come from?

Language of origin: Greek

Fancy is a worn-down, shortened form of the older word 'fantasy', which English took from Old French 'fantasie' and ultimately from the Greek 'phantasia', meaning 'a making visible' or 'an appearance to the mind'. That Greek noun came from 'phantazein', 'to make visible', and is related to 'phos', the word for light, the same root that lights up the word 'phosphorus'. By the 1400s English speakers had clipped 'fantasy' down to 'fancy', and the spelling and the sense drifted together: the mental images conjured up by imagination came to mean a liking, a whim, or a taste for something. From the idea of an indulged taste grew the adjective sense of something decorative or elaborate, the sort of thing one fancies rather than merely needs. The single 'c' pronounced like 's' is the small spelling snag, a leftover from the original 'fantasy' losing its middle.

How the word is built

• fanc- (contraction of fantasy: imagination)
• -y (adjective/noun suffix)