Captivating

How to spell captivating

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce captivating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does captivating mean?

1. adjectiveSo charming or fascinating that it holds your full attention.
2. verbPresent participle of captivate: holding someone's attention or affection completely.

Captivating in a sentence

• adjective

  The documentary offered a captivating account of deep-sea life.

• verb

  The speaker kept captivating the audience for a full hour.

• adjective

  Her captivating smile made the interview memorable.

• verb

  The magician was busy captivating the crowd with one clever trick after another.

Where does captivating come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb capere, which literally meant 'to seize' or 'to take hold of'. From it came captivus, meaning 'taken prisoner', the same root that gives us 'captive' and 'capture'. By the late sixteenth century English had formed the verb 'captivate', first in the literal sense of taking someone prisoner, before it softened into the figurative idea of seizing a person's attention or affection. The present participle 'captivating' settled into use as an adjective for anything that holds you spellbound, as if it had taken you captive. The single 't' in the middle is the quiet spelling trap: because the word feels intense, writers sometimes want to double it, but the root capt- carries only one.

How the word is built

• capt- (from Latin capere: to seize, take)
• -iv- (adjective stem)
• -ate (verb-forming suffix)
• -ing (present participle)