Fanciful, a.
1. Full of fancy; guided by fancy, rather than by reason and experience; whimsical; as, a fanciful man forms visionary projects.
2. Conceived in the fancy; not consistent with facts or reason; abounding in ideal qualities or figures; as, a fanciful scheme; a fanciful theory.
3. Curiously shaped or constructed; as, she wore a fanciful headdress. Gather up all fancifullest shells. Keats.
Syn. -- Imaginative; ideal; visionary; capricious; chimerical; whimsical; fantastical; wild. -- Fanciful, Fantastical, Visionary. We speak of that as fanciful which is irregular in taste and judgment; we speak of it as fantastical when it becomes grotesque and extravagant as well as irregular; we speak of it as visionary when it is wholly unfounded in the nature of things. Fanciful notions are the product of a heated fancy, without any tems are made up of oddly assorted fancies, aften of the most whimsical kind; visionary expectations are those which can never be realized in fact. -- Fan"ci*ful*ly, adv. -Fan"ci*ful*ness, n.
Shades of meaning
That is fanciful which is dictated or suggested by fancy independently of more serious considerations; the fantastic is the fanciful with the added elements of whimsicalness and extravagance. The fanciful swings away from the real or the ordinary lightly and pleasantly, the fantastic extravagantly, the grotesque ridiculously. A fanciful arrangement of objects is commonly pleasing, a fantastic arrangement is striking, a grotesque arrangement is laughable. A fanciful theory or suggestion may be clearly recognized as such; a visionary scheme is erroneously supposed to have a basis in fact. Compare synonyms for dream; idea; imagination.