What's the difference between capricious and fanciful?

Capricious


Definition:

  • (a.) Governed or characterized by caprice; apt to change suddenly; freakish; whimsical; changeable.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The production of vocal sound is not capricious, it follows certain laws many of which are not known.
  • (2) Yet beneath the facade of implacable command was a moody, capricious man with a strained marriage: while he was in India, his wife Edwina had allegedly conducted an affair with the Indian politician Nehru.
  • (3) In one undisclosed court document in Kenya, seen by the Guardian, BAT’s lawyers demand the country’s high court “quash in its entirety” a package of anti-smoking regulations and rails against what it calls a “capricious” tax plan.
  • (4) The individual number of pathological scores showed a decrease already within the first treatment week and a further decrease by the end of the trial, especially for the items of capriciousness, obstinacy, irritability and restlessness.
  • (5) The rains in Katine sub-county in rural Uganda have been capricious all year, beyond the control even of such a faithful community as this.
  • (6) Degree of compliance with dietary advice, especially of the pregnant woman with a capricious appetite, is understandably difficult to assess.
  • (7) Opportunistic infections are increasingly becoming a problem in cancer patients amongst whom infection with Nocardia species is particularly difficult to detect due to the capricious natural history of the disease.
  • (8) Ashley can be capricious but unless he has a dramatic change of heart, the manager will have the chance to start winning back hearts and minds against Hull.
  • (9) Gambians had come to expect surprises from their leader – cruel, violent and capricious in power – just not ones that set the whole nation dancing in the streets and sent shockwaves of joy and inspiration across the continent.
  • (10) She has played middling singers and capricious interns, dancers, dreamers and damsels in distress, and she has done so with such ease and abandon that the actor and her alter egos have a tendency to blur.
  • (11) Antimicrobial susceptibility testing is somewhat capricious in part from the marked effect of inoculum size in some circumstances.
  • (12) That needs to be taken into consideration.” Philipp Mißfelder, foreign policy spokesman for the Christian Democratic Union, said: “I think deportations and extraditions to countries that have the death penalty are very problematic.” The Berlin judiciary should under no circumstances allow itself to become a willing tool of Cairo's capricious regime Franziska Brantner, Green party Egypt accuses both Qatar and al-Jazeera of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which was branded a terrorist organisation after the military deposed the president, Mohamed Morsi, in 2013.
  • (13) Detailed, within-subjects Golgi analyses of regional differences in cerebellar Purkinje cell dendritic development are impractical due to the capriciousness of that technique.
  • (14) HBFP technique is capricious and the differentiation step should be controlled stringently; ethanolic picric acid, therefore, is recommended as a differentiation fluid.
  • (15) And in part, as Murray staggered about indiscriminately high-fiving at the end, there was a sense that this has also been something of a rather mannered love story, at its centre Murray and that prim, capricious, but in the end compliantly adorable Wimbledon crowd.
  • (16) With De Jong not properly match fit, Vito Mannone remained under-employed but Sunderland's goalkeeper did save a capriciously curving shot from Tioté quite brilliantly.
  • (17) Having bowled out England in their second innings for 123, West Indies were required to make 192 to win the match and square the series and the expectation was that it would be a tough call for them, given the capricious nature of the pitch on the first two days, not least a second day in which 18 wickets fell, which is unprecedented for a Test match in Barbados.
  • (18) This bilingual city in the eastern “Maritime” Canadian province of New Brunswick had appeared the ideal venue for these teams but with dark rain clouds hovering in the humid skies and a capricious wind blowing, the residents of the French speaking suburb of Dieppe and English speaking Riverview had evidently decided to stay indoors.
  • (19) Zwiebel argues the bill would invite capricious litigation "that could be extremely harmful to some of the most important institutions in our community".
  • (20) However, the standards and essentials that are ultimately adopted must be applied uniformly and fairly and not in an arbitrary or capricious manner.

Fanciful


Definition:

  • (a.) Full of fancy; guided by fancy, rather than by reason and experience; whimsical; as, a fanciful man forms visionary projects.
  • (a.) Conceived in the fancy; not consistent with facts or reason; abounding in ideal qualities or figures; as, a fanciful scheme; a fanciful theory.
  • (a.) Curiously shaped or constructed; as, she wore a fanciful headdress.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Quite a lot of the downtown action in The Catcher in the Rye (a night out in a fancy hotel; a date with an old girlfriend; an encounter with a prostitute, and a mugging by her pimp) might almost as well describe a young soldier’s nightmare experience of R&R.
  • (2) The plot departs from the good book in big ways, small ways, in fact any way the makers (evangelical husband and wife Mark Burnett and Roma Downey) fancy.
  • (3) The Normandie Design is plum in the middle of the amiable chaos of South American city life, in Santa Efigênia, where the streets are thronged with tiny electronics stores – great if you fancy a fake Chinese iPhone.
  • (4) Small business gets clobbered by taxes and business rates, while big business turns around and says to the state: "This is how much tax I fancy paying this year, take it or leave it".
  • (5) So really, it could be anyone.” US intelligence believes the Democratic party’s servers were hacked by a group known alternatively as Fancy Bear, APT 29 or Sofacy, which they say was working for the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence .
  • (6) Glitzy online lectures, or fancy learning technologies, are difficult to reconcile with this fundamental scepticism.
  • (7) BSkyB believes the modelling is flawed and that conclusions such as that it could benefit by up to £600m over five years is "fanciful".
  • (8) The first fanciful bit of the Biden 4 Prez story came out this past weekend, when the veep sat down with Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts for a two-hour meeting .
  • (9) Treatments were 0, 2, 4, or 6% (DM basis) bleachable fancy tallow (BT) fed with 0 or 7.5% (DM basis) forage.
  • (10) The court heard how all of these areas and more are gambled on in the unregulated Asian markets, in so-called "fancy bets".
  • (11) I require my coffee to taste like coffee, not like fancy warm milk.
  • (12) "They sit in their fancy hotels, in safety, talking and talking.
  • (13) Protest is what you do when those you elect are not listening, and it can, on occasion, be powerful to dress up in fancy dress and sing.
  • (14) It's actually very taboo to stop and say, "OK, I'm in a band and I'm really successful and my boyfriend's a pop star and he's really handsome and lots of girls fancy him, but I don't want to be with him."
  • (15) Founder and executive deputy chairman Mike Ashley didn't need a salary or a fancy bonus plan because he would gain from the improvement in the company's value.
  • (16) Good luck telling your manager you fancy a day off.
  • (17) I'm not even asking for a handout or asking to be able to keep up a fancy lifestyle and have someone else pay for the boring stuff, I work hard, I save and I pay my taxes and my standard of living gets worse and worse every year.
  • (18) "My use of the word 'fancy' was not meant as a proper insult.
  • (19) The Mr Benn approach also opens up lots of fancy dress options for TV sponsorship bumpers and blipverts.
  • (20) Does he fancy winning the league again & knock Liverpool right off their perch?"