charm

• (General American) IPA^(key): /tʃɑɹm/

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• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /tʃɑːm/
• Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)m

From Middle English charme, from Old French charme (“chant, magic spell”), from Latin carmen (“song, incantation”).

charm (countable and uncountable, plural charms)

1. An object, act or words believed to have magic power (usually carries a positive connotation).

   a charm against evil

   It works like a charm.

2. The ability to persuade, delight or arouse admiration; often constructed in the plural.

   He had great personal charm.

   She tried to win him over with her charms.

   • Alexander Pope

     Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

   • Milton

     the charm of beauty's powerful glance

3. A small trinket on a bracelet or chain, etc., traditionally supposed to confer luck upon the wearer.

   She wears a charm bracelet on her wrist.

4. (physics) A quantum number of hadrons determined by the quantity of charm quarks & antiquarks.
5. (finance) A second-order measure of derivative price sensitivity, expressed as the instantaneous rate of change of delta with respect to time.

• (something with magic power): amulet, incantation, spell, talisman
• (quality of arousing delight or admiration): appeal, attraction, charisma
• (trinket): amulet, dangle, ornament
• (measure of derivative price sensitivity): delta decay, DdeltaDtime

• (quality of arousing delight or admiration): boredom, dryness

• (measure of derivative price sensitivity): Greeks (includes list of coordinate terms)

charm (third-person singular simple present charms, present participle charming, simple past and past participle charmed)

1. To seduce, persuade or fascinate someone or something.
   • John Milton

     They, on their mirth and dance / Intent, with jocund music charm his ear.

   • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 4, in The Celebrity:

     The Celebrity, by arts unknown, induced Mrs. Judge Short and two other ladies to call at Mohair on an afternoon when Mr. Cooke was trying a trotter on the track. The three returned wondering and charmed with Mrs. Cooke; they were sure she had had no hand in the furnishing of that atrocious house.

   He charmed her with his dashing tales of his days as a sailor.

2. (transitive) To use a magical charm upon; to subdue, control, or summon by incantation or supernatural influence.
   • William Shakespeare

     No witchcraft charm thee!

   After winning three games while wearing the chain, Dan began to think it had been charmed.

3. To protect with, or make invulnerable by, spells, charms, or supernatural influences.
   • William Shakespeare

     I, in my own woe charmed, / Could not find death.

   She led a charmed life.

4. (obsolete, rare) To make music upon.
   • Edmund Spenser

     Here we our slender pipes may safely charm.

5. To subdue or overcome by some secret power, or by that which gives pleasure; to allay; to soothe.
   • Alexander Pope

     Music the fiercest grief can charm.

• (seduce, entrance or fascinate): delight, enchant, entrance
• (use magic): bewitch, enchant, ensorcel, enspell

• Spanish: ^{(please verify)} prendar (es)

Variant of chirm, from Middle English chirme, from Old English ċierm (“cry, alarm”), from Proto-Germanic *karmiz.

charm (plural charms)

1. The mixed sound of many voices, especially of birds or children.
   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book IV:

     Sweet is the breath of Morn, her rising sweet, / With charm of earliest Birds […]

   • Spenser

     free liberty to chant our charms at will

   • 1955, William Golding, The Inheritors, Faber and Faber 2005, p. 152:

     The laughter rose like the charm of starlings.

2. A flock, group (especially of finches).

• March, march

Borrowed from English charm.

charm c (singular definite charmen, plural indefinite charms)

1. charm

See charme (“to charm”).

charm

1. imperative of charme

• IPA^(key): /ɧarm/

charm c

1. charm; the ability to persuade, delight, or arouse admiration

• charma
• charmant
• charmera
• charmig
• charmerande
• charmör