Actual
Actual adjective - Existing in fact and not merely as a possibility.
Usage example: the actual outcome of the election was quite different from what everybody had expected
Fanciful
Fanciful adjective - Not real and existing only in the imagination.
Usage example: the fanciful creatures that J.R.R. Tolkien created for his Middle Earth novels
Both words in one sentence
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Most illustrations depict Charming as a large, fanciful bird resembling a pheasant, rather than an actual bluebird.
Source: Bluebird of Happiness -
In the first book, it's clearly just a fanciful version of an actual antlion, since the Moomins are tiny enough to be attacked by an insect, but later on the question of its size becomes completely paradoxical.
Source: Literature / The Moomins - Reign killed King Henry II of France this way a jousting mishap with a broken lance splinter stabbing into his brain through his eye socket which was for once on this fanciful show an actual Truth in Television, as the real King Henry actually did die that way.
Source: Eye Scream / Live-Action TV
Cite this Source
Fanciful and Actual. (2016). Retrieved 2026, August 14, from https://thesaurus.plus/related/actual/fanciful
Actual & Fanciful. N.p., 2016. Web. 14 Aug. 2026. <https://thesaurus.plus/related/actual/fanciful>.
Fanciful or Actual. 2016. Accessed August 14, 2026. https://thesaurus.plus/related/actual/fanciful.
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