phantasmagorical

English

Etymology

phantasmagoric +‎ -al

Adjective

phantasmagorical (comparative more phantasmagorical, superlative most phantasmagorical)

1. Alternative form of phantasmagoric
   • 1886, Julian Hawthorne, Confessions and Criticisms, ch. 3 "Americanism in Fiction":

     Accordingly, Hawthorne selects the Brook Farm episode (or a reflection of it) as affording his drama "a theatre, a little removed from the highway of ordinary travel, where the creatures of his brain may play their phantasmagorical antics, without exposing them to too close a comparison with the actual events of real lives."

   • 1921, Aldous Huxley, chapter 28, in Crome Yellow‎^[1], London: Chatto & Windus:

     "In my youth," he went on after a pause, "I found myself, quite fortuitously, involved in a series of the most phantasmagorical amorous intrigues."