Fantasy or phantasy?
fantasy is a noun meaning “That which comes from one's imagination or the act of imagining things”; phantasy is a noun meaning “The innate, mental image of an object; the link between instinct and reality”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) fantasy is about 148 times as common as phantasy.
What is the difference between fantasy and phantasy?
| fantasy | phantasy | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun, verb | noun |
| Meaning | That which comes from one's imagination or the act of imagining things The literary genre generally dealing with themes of magic and the supernatural, imaginary worlds and creatures, etc To conceive (something) mentally; to imagine | The innate, mental image of an object; the link between instinct and reality |
| Example | none recorded | none recorded |
| Forms | fantasies | phantasies |
| Pronunciation | /ˈfæntəsi/ /ˈfæntəzi/ [ˈfæ̃ɾ̃əsi] | not recorded |
| In writing | 33 times per million words | about once in every 4 million words |
Sources: fantasy and phantasy in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of fantasy and phantasy
fantasy
- 1
That which comes from one's imagination or the act of imagining things
- 2
To conceive (something) mentally; to imagine
- 3
The literary genre generally dealing with themes of magic and the supernatural, imaginary worlds and creatures, etc
- 4
To fantasize about (something)
- 5
A fantastical design
- 6
To conceive mentally; to imagine
- 7
slangThe drug gamma-hydroxybutyric acid
phantasy
- 1
The innate, mental image of an object; the link between instinct and reality
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, fantasy or phantasy?
fantasy appears 33 times per million words; phantasy about once in every 4 million words.
fantasy 33 times per million wordsphantasy about once in every 4 million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search fantasy vs phantasy?
“fantasy vs phantasy” is searched about 40 times a month on Google and 10 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“phantasy vs fantasy”, “fantasy or phantasy”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.