A report is publicly spread abroad by some person, that there exists a giant seventy feet high; the learned soon after begin to discuss and dispute about the color of his hair, the thickness of his thumb, the measurement of his nails; they exclaim, cabal, and even fight upon the subject. Those who maintain that the little finger of the giant is only fifteen lines in diameter burn those who assert that it is a foot thick. "But, gentlemen," modestly observes a stranger passing by, "does the giant you are disputing about really exist?" "What a horrible doubt!" all the disputants cry out together. "What blasphemy! What absurdity!" A short truce is then brought about to give time for stoning the poor stranger; and, after having duly performed that murderous ceremony, they resume fighting upon the everlasting subject of the nails and little finger. FANCY. Fancy formerly signified imagination, and the term was used simply to express that faculty of the soul which receives sensible objects. Descartes and Gassendi, and all the philosophers of their day, say that "the form or images of things are painted in the fancy." But the greater part of abstract terms are, in the course of time, received in a sense different from their original one, like tools which industry applies to new purposes. Fancy, at present, means "a particular desire, a transient taste"; he has a fancy for going to China; his fancy for gaming and dancing has passed away. An artist paints a fancy portrait, a portrait not taken from any model. To have fancies is to have extraordinary tastes, but of brief duration. Fancy, in this sense, falls a little short of oddity (_bizarrerie_) and caprice. Caprice may express "a sudden and unreasonable disgust." He had a fancy for music, and capriciously became disgusted with it. Whimsicality gives an idea of inconsistency and bad taste, which fancy does not; he had a fancy for building, but he constructed his house in a whimsical taste. There are shades of distinction between having fancies and being fantastic; the fantastic is much nearer to the capricious and the whimsical. The word "fantastic" expresses a character unequal and abrupt. The idea of charming or pleasant is excluded from it; whereas there are agreeable fancies. We sometimes hear used in conversation "odd fancies" (_des fantasies musquées_); but the expression was never understood to mean what the "Dictionary of Trévoux" supposes--"The whims of men of superior rank which one must not venture to condemn;" on the contrary, that expression is used for the very object and purpose of condemning them; and _musquée_, in this connection, is an expletive adding force to the term "fancies," as we say, _Sottise pommée_, _folie fieffée_, to express nonsense and folly. FASTI. _Of the Different Significations of this Word._ The Latin word "_fasti_" signifies festivals, and it is in this sense that Ovid treats of it in his poem entitled "The Fasti."