noun
The imagination.
[…] But know that in the soul / Are many lesser faculties, that serve / Reason as chief; among these Fancy next / Her office holds […]
In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish’d dove; / In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
An image or representation of anything formed in the mind.
How now, my lord! why do you keep alone, / Of sorriest fancies your companions making, / Using those thoughts which should indeed have died / With them they think on?
Her timbers were olden dreams dreamed long ago, and poets’ fancies made her tall, straight masts, and her rigging was wrought out of the people’s hopes.
An opinion or notion formed without much reflection.
When you have well viewed the Scenes and Devillish shapes of this Practicall Metamorphosis, and scan’d them in your serious thoughts, you will wonder at their audacious phant’sies, who seeme to hold Specificall deformities, or that any part can seeme unhandsome in their Eyes, which hath appeared good and beautifull unto their Maker […]
I have always had a Fancy, that Learning might be made a Play and Recreation to Children […]
A whim.
I had a fancy to learn to play the flute.
Love or amorous attachment.
And they’ve taken a fancy to me, Aunt said. Kitto and the others. That means they like me.
He took a fancy to her.
adj
Decorative, or featuring decorations, especially intricate or diverse ones.
This is a fancy shawl.
Of a superior grade.
This box contains bottles of the fancy grade of jelly.
Executed with skill.
He initiated the game-winning play with a fancy deked saucer pass to the winger.
Unnecessarily complicated.
I'm not keen on him and his fancy ideas.
Extravagant; above real value.
This anxiety never degenerated into a monomania, like that which led his [Frederick the Great's] father to pay fancy prices for giants.
adv
In a fancy manner; fancily.
I igonored it, hurdling her navel, riding her torso and taking both her breasts in my hands and mashing them none too fancy.