fantastic [LME] A word originally meaning ‘existing only in the imagination, unreal’ that comes from Greek phantastikos ‘vision’. Fantasy [LME] is of similar origin, as is fancy [LME], a contracted version of fantasy. The modern use of fantastic to mean ‘wonderful, excellent’ dates from the 1930s. The playful phrase trip the light fantastic, meaning ‘to dance’, goes back to John Milton’s 1645 poem L’Allegro: ‘Come, and trip it as you go / On the light fantastic toe.’ Pant [ME] ‘to breath spasmodically’ goes back to the root verb of fantastic, phainon ‘to show’, via Old French pantaisier ‘be agitated, gasp’; as do phantom [ME] from phantasma ‘mere appearance’ and phenomenon [L16th] which meant ‘things appearing to view’ in the original Greek.