Word of the Day for Tuesday, October 25, 2011
mesmerize \MEZ-muh-rahyz\, verb:
1. To spellbind; fascinate.
2. To hypnotize.
3. To compel by fascination.
What a joy it was to mesmerize his audience, delight them, sell them the medicine, trick them.
-- Jeffery Deaver, The Vanished Man
“This gentleman," said Fraisier, darting at Schmucke one of those poisonous glances wherewith he was wont to mesmerize his victims, just as a spider mesmerizes a fly...
-- Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy
Mesmerize is an eponym from Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), an Austrian physician who developed a theory of animal magnetism and a mysterious body fluid which allows one person to hypnotize another.
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