Fantastication

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The act of indulging in wild, fanciful imagining or extravagant fantasy ; an elaborate, often grotesque ornamentation or distortion of something plain
2. Creating fantasies or unrealistic visions in the mind ; producing overly ornate, bizarre or distorted decoration or form
3. A flight of extravagant, whimsical fancy ; the process of adorning or warping something into a strange, overwrought shape

Etymology: Fantastication is a word of plain construction: it combines "fantastic" with the suffix "-ation", or alternatively builds on the verb "fantasticate" plus "-ion". Either route produces the same sense, a noun for the act of making something fantastic, or for a fantastic or extravagant result of such a process. The root "fantastic" comes ultimately from Greek "phantastikos", meaning able to make visible or capable of imagining, which is tied to "phantasia", appearance or imagination. Over centuries the English adjective shifted from "existing in imagination" toward "extravagant" or "wonderful", which is the sense that the noun inherits when it describes something elaborate or ornate. The verb "fantasticate" and the noun built on it belong to the same family of formations, where English speakers attached suffixes to adjectives and verbs to name a process. The word is uncommon, and its use is mostly confined to written English where a writer wants a heavier, more formal term than "fantasy" alone.