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Phantasm   Listen
noun
Phantasm  n.  (Spelt also fantasm)  
1.
An image formed by the mind, and supposed to be real or material; a shadowy or airy appearance; sometimes, an optical illusion; a phantom; a dream. "They be but phantasms or apparitions."
2.
A mental image or representation of a real object; a fancy; a notion. "Figures or little features, of which the description had produced in you no phantasm or expectation."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Phantasm" Quotes from Famous Books



... questionable hero." However, "in his way he is a Reality," one feels "that he always means what he speaks; grounds his actions, too, on what he recognizes for the truth; and, in short, has nothing of the Hypocrite or Phantasm." Despite his tyranny and his bloody career, he, therefore, is another of Carlyle's "real kings." While this work is a history of modern Europe, Friedrich is always the central figure. He gives to these six volumes a human note, a glowing interest of personal adventure, and a oneness that are ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... it all—yea, even of this solid-seeming terrestrial plain and yon overhanging roof and the beautiful lights set therein for our passing pleasure! This sun which swims daily through the firmament is but a painted phantasm compared with the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... my reader, for the frequent use of the word Idea, which he will find in the following Treatise. It being that term which, I think, serves best to stand for whatsoever is the object of the understanding, when a man thinks. I have used it to express whatever is meant by Phantasm, Notion, Species, OR WHATEVER IT IS, which the mind can be employed about in thinking; and I could not avoid frequently using it." Dr. REID follows nearly in the same track:—"It is a fundamental ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam

... See what you've done! Essayed to light a guilty passion up, And kindled in its stead a holy one! For I do love thee! Know'st thou not the wish To find desert doth bring it oft to sight Where yet it is not? so, for substance, passes What only is a phantasm of our minds! I feared thy love was guilty—yet my wish To find it honest, stronger than my fear, My fear with fatal triumph overthrew! Now hope and fear give up to certainty, And I must fly ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles

... bride! Is it a dream? Is it a phantasm? 'Tis Too horrible for reality! for aught else Too palpable! O would it were a dream! How would I bless the sun that waked me from it! I perish! Like some desperate mariner Impatient of a strange and hostile land, Who rashly hoists his sail and puts to sea, ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles

... also the soul or other self. Tasmanians, Algonquins, Central-Americans, Abipones, Basutos, and Zulus are cited by Mr. Tylor as thus implicitly asserting the identity of the shadow with the ghost or phantasm seen in dreams; the Basutos going so far as to think "that if a man walks on the river-bank, a crocodile may seize his shadow in the water and draw him in." Among the Algonquins a sick person is supposed to have ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... in my chair thinking, this phantasm of my father came, and turned, and vanished with a solemn regularity. It was a peculiar figure, strongly made, thick-set, with a face large, and very stern; he wore a loose, black velvet coat and waistcoat. It was, however, the figure of an elderly rather than an old man—though he was then past ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... Flying Dutchman!" remarked Merriwell, and, indeed, the passing steamer did seem more a phantasm of the fog than a real vessel carrying living, breathing people. The Merry Seas sounded her whistle at frequent intervals as she pushed on into the fog, and for some time after the steamer had vanished her hoarse whistle ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish

... and then wanders back and stares at the fire. The Carnival of Venice, of Florence, of Rome; colour and costume, romance and rapture! The young person gazes in the firelight at the flickering chiaroscuro of the future, discerns at last the glowing phantasm of opportunity, and determines with a wild heart-beat to go and ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... modum et finem) may be inferred with great probability from the fact that man is a compound of body and soul. Aristotle holds that the human mind cannot think without the aid of the imagination.(59) If this is true, every supernatural thought must be preceded by a corresponding phantasm to excite and sustain it. As for the sensitive appetite, it may either assume the form of concupiscence and hinder the work of salvation, or aid it by favorable emotions excited supernaturally. St. Augustine says that the delectatio victrix has for its object "to impart ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... term which, I think, serves best to stand for whatsoever is the object of the understanding. I have used it to express whatever is meant by phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is the mind can be employed about in thinking. Let us, then, suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper void of all characters—without any ideas. Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... influence over sheep and other animals; in Exodus, chapter xvii., verse 15, Moses with the aid of a rod discovers water in the rock at Rephidim, and for similar instances one has only to refer to Exodus, chapter xiv., verse 16, and chapter xvii., verses 9-11. The calling up of the phantasm of Samuel at Endor more than suggests a biblical precedent for the modern practice of spiritualism; and it was, undoubtedly, the abuse of such power as that possessed by the witch of Endor, and the ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... procession of nations in time, like the erratic phantasm of a dream, go forward without reason or order? Or, is there a predetermined, a solemn march, in which all must join, ever moving, ever resistlessly advancing, encountering and enduring an inevitable ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... abysmal, his wants are endless till he becomes truly conscious of his soul. Till then, the world to him is in a state of continual flux— a phantasm that is and is not. For a man who has realised his soul there is a determinate centre of the universe around which all else can find its proper place, and from thence only can he draw and enjoy the blessedness of ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore

... what bitter test had they been put! Had all the past been but as the marble image of a happy life! Was all the future shattered before him! Pshaw! he was the unconscious slave of a superstition—a phantasm, a ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... Balsamon Balm Balsam. Blasph[-e]mein (to speak ill of) Blame Blaspheme. Cheirourgon[9] Chirurgeon Surgeon. (a worker with the hand) Dact[)u]lon (a finger) Date (the fruit) Dactyl. Phantasia Fancy Phantasy. Phantasma (an appearance) Phantom Phantasm. Presbuteron (an elder) Priest Presbyter. Paralysis ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn

... actually coming down the path toward her; she held her eyes fixed upon the ground at her feet, and then it seemed to her every moment that he was just going to take the seat next her. The seat was already taken; a heavy German woman filled it so solidly that no phantasm could have squeezed in beside her. But the presence of Dickerson became so veritable that Cornelia started up breathless, and hurried home, sick with the fear that she should find him waiting ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells

... poured and the god arises, worthy of continual but evil praise and of the thanks of the vicious, a Deity for the moment deceitfully kindly to men. Under his influence the whole mind receives a sharp vision of power. It is a phantasm and a cheat. Men can do wonders through wine; through Tea they only think themselves great and clear—but that is enough if one has bound oneself to that strange idol and learnt the magic phrase on His Pedestal, [Greek: ARISTON MEN TI], for of all the illusions and ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... convict, a situation which enabled him to guess at disaster worse than death. When his mind could command a thought, it was that of suicide. He must, at any cost, escape the ignominy that loomed before him like the phantasm of a ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... of roses, with a single curving palm-tree stuck black and feathery against the gold sunset, it is hardly to be wondered at that I should slip into a mood of visionary enjoyment, looking for a time on the whole thing as the misty phantasm of a summer dream. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... from a higher plane? Could I ascend so far above the frailties of average men as to receive in purity and innocence the license which acceptance of this strange scheme would surely give? Dim-sighted as I was, it was necessary to rise and dispel this splendid phantasm. I shuddered in sudden alarm at the danger which threatened me. By a spasmodic movement, in which I failed to recognize any presence of my will, the manuscript was closed and handed to Clifton. Welcome existence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect—in terror. In this unnerved—in this pitiable condition—I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR." ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... through the experience of the last few minutes, that it was a reality and not some beautiful phantasm of the red and gold world which again lay quiet and lifeless about him, Philip could scarcely convince himself as he made his way back to the canoe and the fire. The discovery of this girl, buried six hundred miles in a wilderness that was almost a terra incognita to the white man, ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... bosom swims the fair phantasm Of a subterraneous azure chasm, So soft and clear, you would say the stream Was dreaming of heaven ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... a thing for no better reason than because I never saw it, and cannot understand its operations. Do you believe, O Timotheus, that Perictione, the mother of Plato, became his mother by the sole agency of Apollo's divine spirit, under the phantasm of that god? ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... or vehicle of the spirit; the spirit disembodied would be a mere wraith, a phantasm of the living man. The life of the world to come is not unreal or shadowy as compared with the concrete reality of the life of earth: it is a life richer and fuller, more concrete and more glorious than the life ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson

... Karl XII. in the trenches at Fredericshall, could not get a King again; and is very anarchic under its Phantasm King and free National Palaver,—Senate with subaltern Houses;—which generally has French gold in its pocket, and noise instead of wisdom in its head. Scandalous to think of or behold. The French, desirous to keep Russia in play during these high Belleisle ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... to Jesus of Nazareth. Basilides himself (Strom. iv. 12 s. 83) knows of an earthly Jesus and denies the principle of his sinlessness (see above). According to the account given by Irenaeus, the Saviour is said to have appeared only as a phantasm; according to the Excerpta ex Theodoto, 17, the Diakonos descended upon Jesus at His baptism in the form of a dove, for which reason the followers of Basilides celebrated the day of the baptism of Jesus, the day of the [Greek: epiphaneia]. as a high festival (Clemens, Strom. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... possibility had risen before Romola that made her heart beat faster; for to one who is anxiously in search of a certain object the faintest suggestions have a peculiar significance. And when the curl was held towards her, it seemed for an instant like a mocking phantasm of the lock she herself had cut to wind with one of her own five years ago. But she preserved her outward calmness, bent not only on knowing the truth, but also on coming to that knowledge in a way that would not pain this poor, trusting, ignorant ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... having lost the corporeal form given to Him by religion, and as divulged in the history of the creation, lost at once all His attributes, and being magnified to fill the infinite and being absorbed into it, became so impalpable and subtle to the intellect as to appear a phantasm. ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... gazing now in a different mood from any that had come to him before: he had begun to find out something fresh about this same stream, and the life in his own heart to which it served as a revealing phantasm. He recognized that what in the stream had drawn him from earliest childhood, with an infinite pleasure, was the vague sense, for a long time an ever growing one, of its MYSTERY—the form the infinite first takes to the simplest and liveliest ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... eyes looking up to my window from the lane below, which on the night of my arrival I had relegated to the limbo of dreamland, had been verity and not phantasm. If that were so, then the uncanny visitant to my cottage had pursued me ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... land was a signal for vain flight—the miserable lover knew it to be the flamboyant ether of the pyromaniac transformed into a trumpeting tornado. And he hoped that it would not spare him, as this phantasm twirled and ululated in the heavens, a grim portent of the iron wrath of the Almighty. In a twinkling it had passed him, high in the dome of heaven, only to erase in a fabulous blast the moaning multitude. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... not afraid the champion good Stood still, but when the tempest passed he spied, He entered boldly that forbidden wood, And of the forest all the secrets eyed, In all his walk no sprite or phantasm stood That stopped his way or passage free denied, Save that the growing trees so thick were set, That oft his sight, and passage oft ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... returned in the beginning of September thoroughly eclipsed and worn out, probably the weariest of all men living under the sky. Sure enough I have a fatal talent of converting all Nature into Preternaturalism for myself: a truly horrible Phantasm-Reality it is to me; what of heavenly radiances it has, blended in close neighborhood, in intimate union, with the hideousness of Death and Chaos;—a very ghastly business indeed! On the whole, it is better to hold one's peace about it. I flung myself down on sofas here,—for ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... we may say, must be free from all self-sufficiency. How deep and mysterious it is, as if it were the author of all things! We should make our sharpness blunt, and unravel the complications of things. . . . How still and clear is Tao, a phantasm with the semblance of permanence! I do not know whose son it is. It might appear to have been ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... there was a strange sight. A phantasm seemed to have come before every member of that mad, murderous band; for they saw, as it were, in the single champion before them, a long, swaying line of men of slight stature like him; of men who dashed through ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... shame to me in that than in the rest. I loved in a dream. I made myself the father of this Hilda in my shadowy visions; I made in my thoughts a mother for her, like her, dead long ago, whom I had loved. I talked with a shadow, I loved a shadow, and the unreal phantasm I loved grew to be like Hilda herself— so like that when I saw they were the same, last night, here upon this very spot, I knew that I must die and quickly. The shadow was the living wife of him for whom I would give all, of my only friend, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... maintained that all Nature is but the phantasm of our senses. Had it, after first granting that the senses themselves were evidences of matter and motion, maintained that Nature was only evident to us through them, it would have been simple truth. Our perceptions of Nature are limited to the capacity of our nervous structure. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... country, sporadic instances of disaffection rather than indications of an epidemic; but in their frame of mind they easily gained faith in the existence of a popular feeling which was, in fact, the phantasm of their own heated fancy. As spring drew on they cast out lines of affiliation. Their purpose was not only negatively against Lincoln, but positively for Fremont. Therefore they made connection with the Central Fremont Club, a small organization ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse

... not believe, some have never had a noble picture of God presented to them; but whether their phantasm is of a mean God because they refuse him, or they refuse him because their phantasm of him is mean, who can tell? Anyhow, mean notions must come of meanness, and, uncharitable as it may appear, I can not but think there is a moral root to all chosen unbelief. But let God himself ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... up as late as August, when Arthur came down for the Bank Holiday. He was still enthusiastic, but uncertainty had dimmed his hope. Marriage had become a magnificent phantasm, superimposed upon a dream, a purely supposititious rise of salary. The prospect had removed itself so far in time that it had parted with its substance, like an object retired modestly ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair

... knew of the cheat, it was not till the spongy foot of my camel had almost trodden in the seeming waters that I could undeceive my eyes, for the shore-line was quite true and natural. I soon saw the cause of the phantasm. A sheet of water heavily impregnated with salts had filled this great hollow, and when dried up by evaporation had left a white saline deposit, that exactly marked the space which the waters had covered, and thus sketched ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... was speaking came a spasm, And wrenched his gnashing teeth asunder; Like one who sees a strange phantasm He lay,—there was a silent chasm Between his upper jaw and ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... arms. She lay without motion, her head and her clasped hands towards the loophole, her thick, clubbed hair hiding her neck. A woman! Count Hannibal stared, and, fancying he dreamed, closed his eyes, then looked again. It was no phantasm. It was the Countess; it ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman



Words linked to "Phantasm" :   spook, phantom, ghost, illusion, wraith, spectre, flying saucer, semblance, shade



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