Fascination

How to spell fascination

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce fascination

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fascination mean?

1. nounA powerful, absorbing interest in or attraction to something or someone.

Fascination in a sentence

• Her lifelong fascination with old railway maps filled three boxes in the attic.

• The documentary captured the public fascination with deep-sea creatures.

Where does fascination come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin verb fascinare, meaning 'to bewitch' or 'to put under a spell', which was built on the noun fascinum, a word for an enchantment, an evil spell, or a protective amulet worn against the 'evil eye'. The sense was originally quite literal and sinister: to fascinate someone was to hold them spellbound, much as a snake was once thought to mesmerise its prey. English took the word in through French around the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and over time the magical menace softened into the modern idea of irresistible, delighted interest. A useful spelling clue lives in that Latin root: the silent letter is the 'c' in the 'sc' cluster, so the word keeps the full fascin- spelling rather than the 'facin-' that the ear suggests. The same root also gives us the verb 'fascinate', so learning one secures the other.

How the word is built

• fascin- (from Latin fascinare: to bewitch)
• -ation (noun-forming suffix)