enchanter

• enchantor (obsolete)
• enchauntor (obsolete, rare)
• enchantour (obsolete)
• enchauntour (obsolete)
• inchanter (obsolete)
• inchantor (obsolete)

Borrowed from Old French enchanteor.

enchanter (plural enchanters, feminine enchantress)

1. One who enchants or delights.
   • 1991, "Critics' Voices" in Time, 11 February, 1991,

     Robert Morse brings back to life the author, wit, bon vivant, self-pitier and true enchanter that was Truman Capote in this Tony-winning one-man performance […]

2. A spellcaster, conjurer, wizard, sorcerer or soothsayer who specializes in enchantments.
   • 14^th C., Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, The Parson's Tale, section 38,

     But lat us go now to thilke horrible sweryng of adjuracioun and conjuracioun, as doon thise false enchauntours or nigromanciens in bacyns ful of water, or in a bright swerd, in a cercle, or in a fir, or in a shulderboon of a sheep.

   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book One, Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006, Canto VII, stanza 35, p. 113,

     No magicke arts hereof had any might, / Nor bloody wordes of bold Enchaunters call, / But all that was not such, as seemd in sight, / Before that shield did fade, and suddeine fall:

   • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Book XI, Chapter VIII,

     He was indeed as bitter an enemy to the savage authority too often exercised by husbands and fathers, over the young and lovely of the other sex, as ever knight-errant was to the barbarous power of enchanters; nay, to say truth, I have often suspected that those very enchanters with which romance everywhere abounds were in reality no other than the husbands of those days; and matrimony itself was, perhaps, the enchanted castle in which the nymphs were said to be confined.

   • 1810, J[ohn] Stagg, “Arthur’s Cave. A Legendary Tale.”, in The Minstrel of the North: Or, Cumbrian Legends. […], London: Printed by Hamblin and Seyfang, […], for the author, and sold by J. Blacklock, […], OCLC 7000697, page 105:

     [I]n the reign of Henry the Second, a body happening, by chance, to be dug up near Glastonbury Abbey, without any symptoms of putrefaction or decay, the Welch, the descendants of the Ancient Britons, tenacious of the dignity and reputation of that illustrious hero [King Arthur], vainly supposed it could be no other than the body of their justly-boasted Pen-Dragon; and that he had been immured in that sepulchre by the spells of some powerful and implacable inchanter.

   • 1820, Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ode to the West Wind", lines 2-3,

     Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead / Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

   • 1949, George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Part One, Chapter 1,

     […] Goldstein […] seemed like some sinister enchanter, capable by the mere power of his voice of wrecking the structure of civilization.

• enchanter's nightshade

• re-enchant, reenchant

From Old French enchanter, probably borrowed from Latin incantāre, present active infinitive of incantō. Doublet of incanter.

• IPA^(key): /ɑ̃.ʃɑ̃.te/

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enchanter

1. (transitive) to enchant

• enchanté

• chanter

• “enchanter” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Probably borrowed from Latin incantāre, present active infinitive of incantō, from cantus (“song; chant”). Compare chant, chanter, etc.

enchanter

1. to enchant (to put under the power of an enchantment)
   • Circa 1261, Rutebeuf, Ci commence le miracle de Théophile

     Sui trop fort enchantez.

This verb conjugates as a first-group verb ending in -er. The forms that would normally end in *-ts, *-tt are modified to z, t. Old French conjugation varies significantly by date and by region. The following conjugation should be treated as a guide.

• chanter

• English: enchant (borrowed)
• French: enchanter