Learn English – What does “fancy” mean

meaning

What does fancy mean? I'm interested in positive and negative meanings, and when to use it. I've tried to search it by myself, but there are lot of variants.

EDITED:

I have an example of usage. If I show some project, or new feature to my customer, and he comments it something like "It's kind of fancy". As I understand from the context, it has positive meaning, but how can I more precisely identify his thoughts?

Best Answer

In the context of a product demo "it's kind of fancy" is ambiguous. It depends on context, and you may want to ask for clarification.

  1. It could be positive: there are more features than expected, it goes beyond minimum expectations and offers extra effort or extra value, it is not plain (bad), it is fancy (better).
  2. It could be mildly negative: it is more fancy as in complicated (bad) than expected rather than simple and straightforward (good), or it is fancy as in decorated or ornamental (bad) which might get in the way of being functional (good).

So a fancy car may have desirable extra features; a fancy hammer may be silly.

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