v. [f. FANTASTIC + -ATE3.] † a. trans. To conceive or represent in the fancy; to fancy (obs.). b. intr. To frame fantastic notions. rare. Hence Fantasticating vbl. sb.; Fantastication, fantastic speculation.
1600. F. Walker, Sp. Mandeville, 66 a. Wee call the thinges which we really see, Visions: and others which are fantasticated and represented in the fantasie, Fancies.
1624. Darcie, The Originall of Idolatries, or the Birth of Heresies, xii. 53. Brunus another Missalian Doctor, fantasticates, that by the Maniple is inferred the Messalian Priests speciall care to driue away bad affections.
1880. Vernon Lee, Belcaro, x. 282. When, instead of enjoying, we fantasticate in theory, we not only remove a proportion of our attention from the work in hand, but also exclude ourselves from getting the good we might from other things. Ibid., vii. 179. There is in him [da Vinci] a desire, a capacity for work greater than even his subtle and fantasticating style of art can ever fully employ. Ibid., i. 13. My work has, unconsciously enough, been to logically justify that perfectly simple, direct connection between art and ourselves, which was the one I had felt, as a child, before learning all the wonderful fantastications of art philosophers.
1892. Pall Mall G., 7 Jan., 3/1. This illimitable fantasticating in a vacuum.
