Fantastic in its literal sense means “based on fancy” and hence “not real,” “greater or more extravagant than life.” His paintings were fantastic renderings of nightmarish scenes. But like so many adjectives, fantastic has been taken over by hyperbole and now also means “extreme,” “wonderful,” and “great or large,” as in We had a fantastic time at your party. And that in turn has led the adverb fantastically—He was made up fantastically as a dinosaur of some sort—to drift on to become an intensifier: Her new dress looked fantastically expensive.
