fascination

From Latin fascinare ("to bewitch"), possibly from Ancient Greek βασκαίνιεν (baskaínien, “to speak ill of; to curse”)[1]

• (US) IPA^(key): /fæsɪˈneɪʃən/
• Rhymes: -eɪʃən

fascination (countable and uncountable, plural fascinations)

1. (archaic) The act of bewitching, or enchanting

   Synonyms: enchantment, witchcraft

   • 1914, Louis Joseph Vance, chapter I, in Nobody, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published 1915, OCLC 40817384:

     Little disappointed, then, she turned attention to "Chat of the Social World," gossip which exercised potent fascination upon the girl's intelligence.

2. The state or condition of being fascinated.
   • 1934, Robert Ervin Howard, The People of the Black Circle

     Sliding down the shaft he lay still, the spear jutting above him its full length, like a horrible stalk growing out of his back.
     The girl stared down at him in morbid fascination, until Khemsa took her arm and led her through the gate.

   • 1913, Elizabeth Kimball Kendall, A Wayfarer in China

     But the compensations are many: changing scenes, long days out of doors, freedom from the bondage of conventional life, and above all, the fascination of living among peoples of primitive simplicity and yet of a civilization so ancient that it makes all that is oldest in the West seem raw and crude and unfinished.

   To my fascination, the skies turned all kinds of colours.

3. Something which fascinates.

   Life after death had always been a great fascination to him.

• dread fascination

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fascination f (plural fascinations)

1. fascination

• fasciner

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