Other forms: fancied, fancies
Fancy means decorated and expensive-looking, more than the job needs: a fancy restaurant, fancy handwriting, fancy shoes you cannot walk far in. Plain is the opposite, and nothing fancy is the phrase for a simple meal or a simple plan.
In British English fancy is also a very common verb: I fancy a cup of tea means want, do you fancy the cinema means feel like, and he fancies her means he is attracted to her. Fancy dress means a costume, a pirate or a nurse or a giant banana, and not an expensive gown, which catches out American speakers at British parties. As a noun it survives in take a fancy to, meaning start liking, and a passing fancy, meaning a whim. Fancy that and fancy seeing you here both express surprise. The verb and noun uses are informal, so keep them out of a report.
1adjectivefancyDecorated, elaborate and expensive-looking rather than plain.
“They went somewhere fancy for their anniversary.”
2verbwantIn British English, to want something or feel like having it.
“I fancy a curry tonight.”
3verbattractedIn British English, to be attracted to someone.
“Everyone at the party could see she fancied him.”
4verbimagineTo imagine something, or to believe it without good reason.
“He fancies himself as a bit of a chef.”
5nounlikingA liking or a wish that comes and goes.
“It was a passing fancy and she had forgotten it within a week.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Fancy is fantasy with the middle worn away: Middle English fansy, squeezed out of fantasie. The chain runs back through Medieval Latin fantasia and Latin phantasia to Greek phantasia, from phaino, to make visible, and finally to a root meaning to shine. Something fancy and something fantastic both come out of the business of making things appear.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰeh₂- (shine)
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰh₂nyéti
Ancient Greek
φαντασία
Latin
phantasia — an idea, notion, fancy, phantasm
Medieval Latin
fantasia
Old French
fantasie
Middle English
fansy
English, today
fancy
Built from
From Middle English fansy, fantsy, a contraction of fantasy, fantasye, fantasie, from Old French fantasie, from Medieval Latin fantasia, from Latin phantasia (“an idea, notion, fancy, phantasm”), from Ancient Greek φαντασία, from φαντάζω (“to render visible”), from φαντός (“visible”), from φαίνω (“to make visible”); from the same root as φάος (“light”); ultimately from Proto-Indo-European bʰh₂nyéti, from the root bʰeh₂- (“to shine”). a doublet of fantasia and fantasy and phantasia and phantasy.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA