paleofantasy means A fantasy about how things were in the distant or geological past. It carries an Arena rating of 1380, earned across 65 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, paleofantasy ranks #502 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words, #748 of 17,140 for Most Whimsical Words, #2,536 of 17,163 for Funniest Words, #2,827 of 17,124 for Most Sublime Words.
Why “paleofantasy” is a great word
PALEOFANTASY — [Noun] A romanticized and unscientific belief about how life, particularly human health and behavior, was in the evolutionary past. From the combining form paleo- (from Ancient Greek παλαιός (palaiós, "old")) + fantasy (from Greek φαντασία (phantasía, "appearance, imagination")), coined as the title of Marlene Zuk's 2013 book critiquing the premises of paleo diets and lifestyles. Unlike "paleorealism," which strives for an evidence-based reconstruction of prehistory, or "nostalgia," which longs for a sentimental, often personal past, paleofantasy is a wistful fiction projected onto deep time. It is the silhouette of a perfectly adapted ancestor sprinting across the savanna; the ghost of a primal diet of pure meat and foraged berries; the persistent mirage of a lost golden age of perfect social harmony—a longing for an evolutionary home that never truly existed.
Etymology
From paleo- + fantasy, introduced by Marlene Zuk as the title of her book criticising paleodiets.
noun
- A fantasy about how things were in the distant or geological past.e.g.“That’s just a paleofantasy about the future.” — 2009 January 20, Marlene Zuk, “The Evolutionary Search for Our Perfect Past”, in New York Times:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.