One more language question.

[Carol]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "sistermagpie"
<sistermagpie at ...> wrote:
>
> > Hey guys, a have a small question about the word "fancy". Actually, I
> > asked a question about this word before, especially about the British
> > meanings of it and I had my answer (thanks, Geoff :-)), but here it
> > goes again :-). When DD says in PS/SS "Fancy seeing you here,
> > Professor McGonagall" (Ch.1, p.9 Am.ed. or p.13 Br.ed.), which meaning
> > of the word is it? Does it mean something like "It is surprising to
> > see you here"? Is it the same meaning as in "Fancy that!" expression?
> > Confirmation needed :-). Thanks!
> 
> Magpie:
> That expression does carry the "fancy that" expression (when "fancy
 that" means "imagine that" conveying surprise). Though it's often
used in a way where the surprise is fake--exactly the way Dumbledore
is using it. He's saying, "Fancy meeting you here," to knowingly
suggest that it should be a surprise but it isn't because he knows
that it's  not a coincidence that he's met here there. Like he's
playing along. But it could also be used to express genuine surprise,
in the sense of, "So we went to Barbados and there were our next door
neighbors. Fancy meeting them there!" Definitely not the meaning of
fancy that means "like" (as in "fancy a piece of cake?")

Carol responds:

I agree. In both "fancy that" and "fancy meeting you here," the word
"imagine" can be substituted for "fancy": "imagine that"; "imagine
meeting you here."

On a side note, what we generally call the imagination was sometimes
referred to as the fancy. The Romantic poet Coleridge, however,
insisted that there was a difference. Fancy merely involved taking
what we already know and transforming it by switching parts or
qualities around: putting wings on horses or making broomsticks fly.
Imagination, on the other hand, was a whole new way of looking at
things best exemplified by Romantic poetry itself (Coleridge's "Kublai
Khan" or shelley's "Ode to the West Wind") or maybe by Blake's stanza
beginning "to see the world in a grain of sand." Coleridge would
dismiss many elements of JKR's books (e.g., Quidditch) as mere fancy.

Carol, who's being interrupted and can't finish her post