What does “fantasia” mean in Portuguese?

Fantasia looks like English “fantasy,” and it can mean imagination too — but in everyday Brazilian Portuguese it usually means a costume, the outfit you wear for Carnival or a fancy-dress party. So uma fantasia de carnaval is a Carnival costume, and estar fantasiado means to be dressed up in one. Tell a Brazilian you bought a fantasia and they picture a costume, not a daydream.

The trap is that the imagination sense survives elsewhere — viver de fantasia (“to live in a fantasy”), fantasia as a literary genre — yet “costume” is the sense you hit first in real life, especially around Carnival. The word traveled from Greek phantasia through Latin and Italian into Portuguese, where it picked up its dress-up meaning. In this sketch the whole joke runs on it: one partner insists the other is a cop or a doctor, only to be reminded that the uniform “isso aqui é uma fantasia de carnaval” — it’s just a Carnival costume, and Carnival ended long ago.