captivate
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
Borrowed from Latin captīvō; synchronically analyzable as captive + -ate.
Pronunciation[edit]
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈkæptɪveɪt/
Audio (Southern England) (file) - (General American) IPA(key): /ˈkæptəˌveɪt/
- Hyphenation: cap‧tiv‧ate
Verb[edit]
captivate (third-person singular simple present captivates, present participle captivating, simple past and past participle captivated)
- To attract and hold (someone's) interest and attention; to charm.
- 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter III, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, OCLC 4293071:
- One saint's day in mid-term a certain newly appointed suffragan-bishop came to the school chapel, and there preached on “The Inner Life.” He at once secured attention by his informal method, and when presently the coughing of Jarvis […] interrupted the sermon, he altogether captivated his audience with a remark about cough lozenges being cheap and easily procurable.
- (obsolete) To take prisoner; to capture; to subdue.
- c. 1591–1592, William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act I, scene iv]:
- Their woes whom fortune captivates.
- 1665, Joseph Glanvill, Scepsis Scientifica:
- 'Tis a greater credit to know the ways of captivating Nature, and making her subserve our purposes, than to have learned all the intrigues of policy.
Related terms[edit]
Translations[edit]
to attract and hold interest and attention of
Anagrams[edit]
Latin[edit]
Verb[edit]
captīvāte
Categories:
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *keh₂p-
- English terms borrowed from Latin
- English terms derived from Latin
- English words suffixed with -ate
- English 3-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio links
- English lemmas
- English verbs
- English terms with quotations
- English terms with obsolete senses
- Latin non-lemma forms
- Latin verb forms