fantastication

Zippy and Zerbina embark on a fantasy staycation:

(On staycation and other -cation ‘vacation’ words, see here.) Fantasy and vacation (or staycation) don’t combine easily, but fantastic works fine instead of fantasy, and that gives us fantastication.

As it happens, English already has a noun fantastication, but not in the Zippbina sense. It starts with the verb fantasticate, which has one obsolete sense and one rare sense, but one still current, according to OED2:

c. trans. To render fantastic.

1936    P. Fleming News from Tartary 19   Half a dozen pierrettes and apaches..suitably fantasticated our unserious departure.

1962    Listener 5 July 4/1   We had a terrific opportunity in the nineteenth century to elaborate and fantasticate our social structure.

1966    Punch 16 Mar. 393/2   The novel..gives an amusing account, duly fantasticated, of his arrival in London.

The verb can then be nominalized. OED2 has fantastication in two senses: ‘fantastic speculation’ (with no cites) and as a synonym of phantastry (also fantastry), with cites from 1880 through 1969.

It turns out that phantastry/fantastry is rarer than fantastication; the OED has cites from 1656 through 1922, and marks the word as rare. Quite an assortment of senses: ‘fantastic creation or display; ostentation, affectation, pomp; showy trappings’, also ‘delusory or illusory character, deceptiveness; fantasy’.

The word is based on the noun  fantast/phantast ‘a visionary, a dreamer; a flighty, impulsive person’, or ‘a fantastic writer; one who aims at eccentricity of style’.

So Bill Griffith could fairly be said to indulge in fantastry or fantastication ‘fantastic creation or display’.

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