What's the difference between fanciful and whimsical?

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?"

Whimsical


Definition:

  • (a.) Full of, or characterized by, whims; actuated by a whim; having peculiar notions; queer; strange; freakish.
  • (a.) Odd or fantastic in appearance; quaintly devised; fantastic.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Although he could be lovable, charming, whimsical, encouraging, and deeply devoted to his family, he subjugated the adult women in his household and at least one son to exploitation and abuse, demanding (and receiving from his wife and step-daughter) almost total abnegation of self.
  • (2) Photograph: Rachel King Doing a whimsical self-promotional piece for a weekend culture supplement We would never joke about doing a whimsical self-promotional piece for a weekend culture supplement.
  • (3) Here, it’s easy to make yourself comfortable in the sweet, slightly whimsical bedrooms that open onto a serene, tree-filled courtyard.
  • (4) There's still touches of the old, more whimsical comedian, though, not to mention a one-woman play about the Mitford sisters' love for sexy Nazis.
  • (5) The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies First up is the debut teaser for The Hobbit: The Battle of The Five Armies, the final instalment in Peter Jackson's epic three-part adaptation of JRR Tolkien 's whimsical fantasy fable.
  • (6) But with the support of Tony Whitby, the controller of Radio 4, Bob Robinson played a significant and influential part in accelerating Today's transformation from a whimsical magazine into a news and current affairs programme.
  • (7) A great read, and a delightful puzzle, but as the contradictory and whimsical interpretations of the rabbis show, hardly a reliable basis for justifying real-world land grabs.
  • (8) Find out about the great films they’re showing ...” On Monday, as Fox and Leadsom painted a vision of UK trade slightly more lo-tech and whimsical than the chocolate biscuit mill in Bagpuss, Corbyn’s only media comment was a tweet: “@LabourFilmFest is coming to the North West for the 1st time.
  • (9) More whimsical stuff for county blog regulars here in the north-east, where Darren Pattinson has been the central figure of the morning session.
  • (10) Trundling on a cheesy tourist trail around the Italian capital (the Trevi fountain, the Spanish Steps), it tells four whimsical stories that never intersect, meaning that its most watchable stars – Alec Baldwin, Penélope Cruz, Roberto Benigni and Allen, appearing in one of his movies for the first time since Scoop, in 2006 – never interact.
  • (11) In between, he has offered whimsical, slightly vaudevillian comic sagas of sex and drugs in Notting Hill (then a bohemian enclave of high hippydom) with titles such as The Saga of Peaches Melba and the Hash Officer, and Hector the Dope-Sniffing Hound .
  • (12) This highly energetic picture isn't for everyone – but if you like your whimsical magical realism done up in an antic, extra-crafty style, this may just win your heart.
  • (13) It limits evaluation to mere tendencies, formulated in such vague terms as "complete remission," "partial remission," and "treatment failure," in a disease whose natural history is sometimes so whimsical that the same clinical case, over a period of years, can be both a success and a failure of the same treatment.
  • (14) He was himself an artist in his spare time, and his whimsical creations included a man with three penises (Portnoy's Triple Complaint) carved from a tree trunk.
  • (15) He converted whatever his feelings were into the whimsical, quasi-romantic banter that eventually made its way into the Alice books.
  • (16) I still have mine at home.” Ranieri’s simulated alarm call was no less whimsical to Italian ears three decades ago than it is to English ones today.
  • (17) This article presents a whimsical overview of how a father can participate in this most important relationship through supporting and assisting the mother and developing comforting skills for the infant.
  • (18) The north-south divide always brings out the whimsical Tolkien in southerners.
  • (19) He goes after its baffling, mellifluous names – Smintheus, Agyieus, Platanistius, Theoxenius – his pencil languidly scratches, in a whimsical mock-invocation of Apollo from 1975.
  • (20) Music has always been the principal inspiration for Morris's work, and the variety in this season is reflected at one extreme by A Wooden Tree, Morris's response to the whimsical fantasy of Scottish poet Ivor Cutler, and Socrates, his marvellously poetic dialogue with the austere music of Eric Satie's score.