A sequence of real or imaginary images like that seen in a dream.
‘what happened next was a phantasmagoria of horror and mystery’
‘Someone had set up a strobe light in the back, so the dancing figures were in silhouette, and their movements appeared to consist of a series of slides; like the images from a phantasmagoria.’
‘NBC producer David Michaels and director John Gonzalez put a phantasmagoria of images up on screen in the more than an hour-and-a-half of the telecast.’
‘These paintings harbour a menagerie of folk-monsters, a phantasmagoria of apparitions that might be beatific angels or might be ghoulish extraterrestrials.’
‘He creates a bad-dream atmosphere, a phantasmagoria of boredom, futile journeys, wasted lives and endless, incantatory meetings.’
‘Mere words could never capture the phantasmagoria of our dreamscape.’
delusion, illusion, figment of the imagination, vision, apparition, mirage, chimera, fantasy, dream, daydream
Origin
Early 19th century (originally the name of a London exhibition (1802) of optical illusions produced chiefly by magic lantern): probably from French fantasmagorie, from fantasme ‘phantasm’ + a fanciful suffix.
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