Meaning & use
phantom
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Meanings
nouncountableliterary
A ghost, or a shadowy figure that seems real but is not.
Grammar: Countable: a phantom in the hall.
Patterns
- a phantom of something
The villagers claimed a phantom walked the old road at night.
She saw a phantom in the mist, then it vanished.
In the story, a phantom haunts the opera house.
adjectivebefore a noun
Felt or seen but not truly there; imagined or without real existence.
Grammar: Used before a noun: phantom pain, phantom jam.
Patterns
- phantom pain
- phantom traffic jam
After the surgery he still felt phantom pain in the missing limb.
A phantom traffic jam slowed the cars for no clear reason.
The company was accused of paying phantom employees.
nouncountablefigurative
Something feared or imagined that haunts the mind.
Grammar: Figurative and often plural: phantoms of the past.
Patterns
- the phantoms of something
He couldn't escape the phantoms of his past mistakes.
The phantom of failure followed her through exams.
Old fears returned like phantoms in the night.
Word forms
| plural | phantoms |
|---|
Common combinations
- phantom pain
- Phantom pain is common after limb loss.
- phantom ship
- Sailors told tales of a phantom ship.
- a phantom menace
- They feared a phantom menace that never arrived.
- phantom limb
- He felt an itch in his phantom limb.
- phantom employee
- Auditors found a phantom employee on the payroll.
Synonyms and how they differ
- ghost
- Ghost is the plain everyday word, while phantom sounds more dramatic and literary.
- specter
- Specter is a literary word for a ghost that inspires fear, often with a threatening feel.
- illusion
- Illusion is something that seems real but is not, without the ghostly sense of phantom.
Opposites
Word family
- phantasm noun
- an illusion or ghost
- phantasmal adjective
- ghostly or unreal
- fantasy noun
- an imagined thing, from the same Greek root
- phantomlike adjective
- like a phantom
Commonly confused: phantom or fantom?
phantom vs fantom
This is a misspelling; the correct spelling is phantom with ph.
Practice
After his leg was amputated, he still felt ___ pain in the missing limb.
Choose one answer.
Phantom pain is the fixed medical term for pain felt in a missing limb. The other words do not form this collocation.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “phantom”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.