Phantasmagorical describes a scene that is confused, changing, and strange, like something from a dream. If phantasmagoria is the rushing show, this word is the label you stick on it: a phantasmagorical night, a phantasmagorical film, a phantasmagorical memory. It says the thing keeps shifting and does not feel solid or ordinary. It is an adjective, and like the noun it comes from, it belongs to books and reviews more than to everyday speech. People sometimes reach for it when they only mean “weird” or “colourful”; the fuller sense is that the scene will not hold still, as if the mind or the lights were playing tricks.

光怪陸離的、如夢似幻的