fascinationn.

1572 J. Leslie Table out of Treat. Treasons f. 158 Can it be lesse, then a plaine fascination and sorcery, if your Queene can not yet be induced to see it?

1615 H. Crooke Μικροκοσμογραϕια 60 We deny that fascination or bewitching is done onely by sight.

1702 C. Mather Magnalia Christi i. iv. 16/1 They began to suspect that the Indian Sorcerers had laid the place under some Fascination.

1855 E. Smedley et al. Occult Sci. 204 A belief in Fascination..appears to have been very generally prevalent in most ages and countries.

2012 Jrnl. Hist. Ideas 64 374 Fascination [in ancient Greece] is seen as a form of malicious sorcery carried out without specific techniques or tools.

1622 in R. Baddeley Boy of Bilson 24 In all which maruels nothing seemeth more maruellous then the fascination of men, in beeleeuing them.

1651 J. F. tr. H. C. Agrippa Three Bks. Occult Philos. i. l. 101 Fascination is a binding, which comes from the spirit of the Witch, through the eyes of him that is bewitched, entering to his heart.

1767 F. Fawkes in tr. Theocritus Idylliums vi. (note) The antients imagined that spitting in their bosoms three times..would prevent fascination.

1697 J. Evelyn Numismata ix. 301 Others I might name, who by whatever unaccountable Fascination, or other material Quality of Mastring Spirits, have created Friends of deadly Enemies.

1785 W. Cowper Task vi. 101 Some to the fascination of a name Surrender judgment hoodwinked.

a1806 H. K. White Remains (1807) I. 28 I..can't withstand you know whose fascination.

1860 N. Hawthorne Marble Faun I. xviii. 213 That perilous fascination which haunts the brow of precipices.

1935 V. Bell Sel. Lett. (1993) 386 You really ought to stay longer in Rome than one week. Its fascination grows and Angelica is completely bowled over by it.

2005 Times Lit. Suppl. 11 Feb. 32/3 The complicated character of Canon Collins..is part of the fascination of this book.

1715 J. Ozell tr. F. de S. de la Mothe-Fénelon Adventures Telemachus II. x. 175 You have been acquainted with the Truth from your Infancy upwards, and have never been abandon'd to the Fascinations [1699 seductions] of a too great Prosperity.

1843 W. H. Prescott Hist. Conquest Mexico I. ii. i. 216 The career thus thrown open had all the fascinations of a desperate hazard.

1881 M. E. Braddon Asphodel I. vi. 177 The Rectory had all the shortcomings and all the fascinations of an old house: wide hearths and dog-stoves, high mantel-pieces, deep recessed casements.

1977 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 29 Dec. 13/4 Miss Sperling says digging up old words became a hobby, later a fascination.

2011 Atlantic Monthly Sept. 46/2 The Sphinxian, minxian, languorous half-smile that has made her one of the fascinations of the age.

1768 tr. Voltaire Princess of Babylon xi. 143 There was nothing else talked of but her and her large bird. All the inhabitants were still in a state of fascination.

1830 Dublin Lit. Gaz. 5 June 364/1 One [portrait] in particular had arrested my inmost soul, and every faculty was lost in the intensity of the fascination.

1895 Manch. Weekly Times 1 Nov. (Suppl.) 7/4 While the French stare in fascination,..the 3rd Battalion of Wild Jaegers is disclosed waist-deep in their national beverage.

1948 New Republic 5 July An extreme example of James's fascination by brutality and violence.

2019 W. Austral. (Perth) (Nexis) 31 July 13 The fascination with Lego starts with Duplo-style bricks and toddlers taking great delight in knocking down any tower mum or dad may build.

1766 T. H. Croker et al. Compl. Dict. Arts & Sci. III. at Rattle-snake The charming or fascination of the rattle-snake, as this is usually called, has exercised the wits of many naturalists in vain.

1840 Bradford Observer 21 May She had not the power to turn her back upon it, but, like the fascination of the basilisk, her eyes were rivetted on the object which threatened destruction.

1848 E. Bulwer-Lytton Harold I. i. i. 27 The fascination of the serpent on the bird held her mute and frozen.

1891 G. C. Kingsbury Pract. Hypnotic Suggestion i in Wood's Med. & Surg. Monogr. XII. 269 Mesmer himself walked about the apartment, carrying an iron rod, with which he touched the patients. Sometimes he discarded his rod, in order to magnetize special patients either by means of strokings or by what we call fascination.

1946 Jrnl. Amer. Folklore 59 180 Though the eyes were the usual organ of fascination, it was reported in Sonora that a species of large, black snake could draw even the deer with its breath.

2004 T. Brennan Transmision of Affect iii. 54 He [sc. Freud] clearly distinguishes between the influence of hypnosis, or ‘fascination’, on the one hand, and its contagious effect on the other.

1808 Med. Repository 2nd Hexade 5 259 Surely their danger must have been sufficiently imminent to produce a dementing degree of fear..but I never could discover the symptoms of fascination; the animals would always leap to the nearest tree as fast as possible.

1830 Mirror Lit., Amusem., & Instr. 12 June 395/2 Mrs. — describes herself as sensible of a feeling like what we conceive of fascination, compelling her for a time to gaze on this melancholy apparition.

1910 C. de Saint-Germain Pract. Hypnotism ii. iii. 149 Fascination—linked probably with a sentiment of curiosity—may also be produced by fire or a light.

2015 L. Brennan Shadows in Deep (e-book, accessed 7 Nov. 2019) ‘You like being strangled, asshole?’ she hissed. Bodie watched in paralyzed fascination.