different between fascination vs witchery

English

Etymology

From Latin fascinare ("to bewitch"), possibly from Ancient Greek ?????????? (baskaínien, “to speak ill of; to curse”)Morphologically fascinate +? -ion

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /fæs??ne???n/
• Rhymes: -e???n

Noun

fascination (countable and uncountable, plural fascinations)

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

   Synonyms: enchantment, witchcraft

   • 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.

3. Something which fascinates.

Derived terms

• dread fascination

Translations

References

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fa.si.na.sj??/

Noun

fascination f (plural fascinations)

1. fascination

Related terms

• fasciner

Further reading

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

English

Etymology

witch +? -ery

Noun

witchery (countable and uncountable, plural witcheries)

1. (uncountable) Witchcraft.
   • 1924, George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan, Scene 6,^[1]

     They are determined that I shall be burnt as a witch; and they sent their doctor to cure me; but he was forbidden to bleed me because the silly people believe that a witch’s witchery leaves her if she is bled; so he only called me filthy names.

2. (countable) An act of witchcraft.
   • 1820, Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, Chapter 36,^[2]

     “ […] It may be they know something of the witcheries of this woman.”

3. (uncountable, figuratively) Allure, charm, magic.
   • 1819, William Wordsworth, Peter Bell, A Tale in Verse, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, Part I, p. 20,^[3]

     At noon, when by the forest’s edge

     He lay beneath the branches high,

     The soft blue sky did never melt

     Into his heart,—he never felt

     The witchery of the soft blue sky!

   • 1847, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Chapter 24,^[4]

     “ […] I am influenced—conquered; and the influence is sweeter than I can express; and the conquest I undergo has a witchery beyond any triumph I can win. […] ”

   • 1860, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun, Volume I, Chapter 17,^[5]

     He beheld the scene in his mind’s eye, through the witchery of many intervening years, and faintly illuminated it as if with starlight instead of this broad glow of moonshine.

   • 1920, Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence, Book I, Chapter 1,^[6]

     […] already his imagination, leaping ahead of the engagement ring, the betrothal kiss and the march from Lohengrin, pictured her at his side in some scene of old European witchery.

Synonyms

• witchdom