Alternative or archaic spelling of phantom; a ghost, specter, or something illusory.
Variant spelling of 'phantom,' from Old French 'fantosme,' from Latin 'phantasma,' from Greek 'phantazein' (to show, display). The spelling 'fantom' persisted in English through the 17th-19th centuries before 'phantom' became standard.
Medieval writers loved the spelling 'fantom'—it appears in old ghost stories and literature as the more mysterious variant of 'phantom,' giving it an almost more eerie quality. The word's origin in Greek literally means 'something that appears,' which is why phantoms seem so real even though they're not.
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