Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Determined by, arising from, or marked by whim or caprice. See Synonyms at arbitrary.
- adj. Erratic in behavior or degree of unpredictability: a whimsical personality.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Full of whims; freakish; having odd fancies or peculiar notions; capricious.
- Odd; fantastic.
- Synonyms Singular, Odd, etc. (see eccentric), notional, crotchety.
- Fanciful, grotesque.
Wiktionary
- adj. Given to whimsy; capricious; odd; peculiar; playful; light-hearted or amusing.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Full of, or characterized by, whims; actuated by a whim; having peculiar notions; queer; strange; freakish.
- adj. Odd or fantastic in appearance; quaintly devised; fantastic.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. determined by chance or impulse or whim rather than by necessity or reason
Etymologies
- From whimsy.
Examples
“I feel Dustin would hate the word whimsical to describe anything he's written, but it's given me that sort of delight on a random Tuesday afternoon.”
“As we now know, thanks to his current trial on charges of paying for sex with a minor, he regularly assembles veritable harems of young women for bacchanals with a dress code that could be described as whimsical.”
“She titled the whimsical instructional, "Milk in bags, eh?”
“The sign that had once stood out front, Antiques—New and Old, was gone, as were the Nazi guards, who must have found the designation as whimsical as Private Hüber and his family did.”
“Its style might be well described as whimsical, its purpose is to amuse by means of playful fancies, and it usually exhibits”
Short Story Writing A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story
“Also, there is nothing that could possibly be called whimsical, nothing critical or self-critical, about him.”
“Nobody likes Micawber less for his follies; and Dickens liked his father more, the more he recalled his whimsical qualities.”
“Art is not dignified by being called whimsical -- or capricious.”
“Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, the editor, was away at the time, and I recall his whimsical horror when on his return he read the things I had said about a novel, which I, in the heat of youth, held to be entirely un-American.”
“They seem to regard the wayfaring Britisher as whimsical, that is all.”
East of Paris Sketches in the Gâtinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘whimsical’.
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Fairylike
fairylike, enchanted, pixieish, pixyish, impish, mischievous, fluttery, magical, bewitching, enchanting, fey, otherworldly and 126 more...
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gre
municipal, whit, dissembler, berate, liberally, embellish, dissimilitude, histrionics, flamboyance, bombastic, bovine, calumny and 142 more...
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jaydrox's list
Mah list!
mediocracy, captivatingly, devastatingly, dazedly, heavenly, flawless, copious, conviction, synoptic, amalgamation, prefatory, precursory and 150 more...
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Words describing beauty
Words associated with beauty, love, and a happy feeling!
whimsical, amatory, amorous, paradisiacal, calliope, callitriche, Callimachus, callinectes, calliphora, seraphic, calliopsis, callirhoe and 27 more...
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My Favorites
peanut, chipmunk, pearl, blueberry, graceful, poof, scrumptious, corny, scrambled, blimp, classy, butterfly and 1 more...
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Words for my English Learners
vast, superfluous, inevitable, though, pervasive, overwhelm, assume, presume, curious, eccentric, whimsical, quaint and 12 more...
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personality traits
Ways you can behave, think, or feel.
capricious, whimsical, pragmatic, quixotic, petulant, precocious, gregarious, meticulous, spartan, stoic, pious, stalwart
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Words/Phrases that Make me Smile
brtom Tell me, Constance, how do I look this evening? Is there anything whimsical about me? Is it one of my well-looking days, child? Am I in face to-day?
Goldsmith, She Stoops, I Jan 8, 2007