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 inconsisten............