Fantastically

adv. Also 6–7 phantastically. [f. as prec. + -LY².]

  † 1.  Through the exercise of the fancy or imagination. Obs.

1526.  Pilgr. Perf. (W. de W., 1531), 124 b. Somtyme as it were an aungell of lyght: somtyme visybly, somtyme fantastically.

1691–8.  Norris, Pract. Disc. (1711), III. 121. My Soul fantastically joins with it.

  † 2.  In a phantasmal or unreal manner. Obs.

1543.  Becon, New Year’s Gift, Early Wks. (1843), 318. All this was not fantastically done, but truly and unfeignedly.

1577.  trans. Bullinger’s Decades (1592), 64/1. Our Lord suffered in very deed, & not phantastically to the appearance onely.

  † 3.  Fabulously, fictitiously. Obs.

1547.  J. Harrison, Exhort. Scottes, B viij a. As Welshe and Scottishe Poetes, haue phantastically fayned.

1577–87.  Holinshed, Chron., I. 91/1. Arthur, of whom the trifling tales of the Britains … fantasticallie do descant and report woonders.

  4.  According to one’s fancy; capriciously, arbitrarily.

1547–64.  Bauldwin, Mor. Philos. (Palfr.), 63. He cannot be a true seruer of God, which serueth Him … fantastically, and in hipocrisie.

1663.  Cowley, Disc. Govt. O. Cromwell, Wks. (1669), 59. Though it may seem to some fantastically, yet was it wisely done.

1701.  Grew, Cosm. Sacra, II. iv. One cannot so much as fantastically choose, even or odd.

1829.  I. Taylor, Enthus., iv. (1867), 79. The righteous God deals with mankind not fantastically.

1885.  Law Times, LXXIX. 78/1. If the application of the word was sufficiently novel to distinguish the goods to which it was applied from others of the same kind, then the word could be used as a trade mark just as well as any fantastically coined word.

  5.  In a fanciful or odd manner: grotesquely, oddly, strangely.

1597.  Shaks., 2 Hen. IV., III. ii. 334. A forked Radish, with a Head fantastically caru’d vpon it.

1662.  J. Davies, Voy. Ambass., 129. They are all disguis’d, and have on their heads great wooden hats, fantastically painted, daubing their beards with honey, that the sparkles might not fasten in them.

1796.  Morse, Amer. Geog., I. 747. Their hair is smoothed back in the front, and adorned with artificial flowers, beads and feathers, fantastically arranged.

1813.  Byron, The Giaour, 301.

1852.  Miss Yonge, Cameos, I. xlii. 365. Mortimer’s display and presumption outdid even poor Piers Gaveston: he had one hundred and eighty knights in his own train alone, and their dress was so fantastically gay that the Scots jested on them, and made rhymes long current in the North—