mesmerise
to hypnotise
TRANSLATION
to mesmerise = hypnotisieren; faszinieren; mesmerisieren
STATISTICS
IN THE PRESS
"I was at this party and completely and totally off my face," Robbie Williams once recalled. "Mushrooms, Ecstasy, all sorts of stuff. And I was staring at this painting for ages. I was just MESMERISED by it. And (U2 frontman) Bono comes up and asks, 'Robbie, what are you doing?' And I said, 'Bono, man, this painting is incredible.' And he said, 'Robbie, that's a window.'"
Williams, Robbie (1974- ) British musician
Williams, Robbie (1974- ) British musician
Did you
know?
mes-me-rise (mesmerize = US)
verb
1. To spellbind; enthrall: “He could mesmerize an audience by the sheer force of his presence”
2. To hypnotize
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Origin
Names after Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), who managed in the course of his long career to be spectacularly wrong about almost everything, yet still demonstrate (without realizing it) an important principle of modern medicine.
Although Dr. Mesmer graduated from a prestigious medical school in Vienna, he was a rather bizarre character. In his doctoral thesis, Mesmer proposed the existence of a mysterious universal force, which he would later call "animal magnetism." Mesmer believed that he could manipulate this force, and cure his patients, simply by stroking them with magnets.
Not surprisingly, Mesmer was quickly judged to be a charlatan and left Vienna for Paris, where he became a favorite of Queen Marie Antoinette and her court. Fashionable Parisians flocked to Mesmer's group sessions, where patients would hold hands and dip their feet in tubs of "magnetized" water, while Mesmer danced around them speaking softly and waving a magic wand. Many of his patients reported miraculous cures.
But what Mesmer had actually done, without realizing it, was to hypnotize his patients into thinking they were cured, which in many cases worked because they weren't really very sick to begin with.
Mesmer was eventually discredited by a scientific commission (which included Benjamin Franklin), but his name was immortalized as a synonym for "hypnotize," and the principle that a patient's belief in a cure can be a significant factor in recovery is widely accepted today.
(Adapted from Word Detective - Evan Morris)
Synonyms
allure, attract, beguile, bewitch, captivate, charm, delight, draw, enamor, enchant, enrapture, enthrall, entrance, fascinate, hex, hypnotize, inveigle, kill, knock dead, knock out, magnetize, mesmerize, possess, slay, spell, take, tickle, tickle pink, transport, turn on, vamp, voodoo, wile, win, win over, wow
IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS TODAY
say something like:
"William spoke English with such a wonderful accent, I was totally mesmerised"
verb
1. To spellbind; enthrall: “He could mesmerize an audience by the sheer force of his presence”
2. To hypnotize
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Origin
Names after Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), who managed in the course of his long career to be spectacularly wrong about almost everything, yet still demonstrate (without realizing it) an important principle of modern medicine.
Although Dr. Mesmer graduated from a prestigious medical school in Vienna, he was a rather bizarre character. In his doctoral thesis, Mesmer proposed the existence of a mysterious universal force, which he would later call "animal magnetism." Mesmer believed that he could manipulate this force, and cure his patients, simply by stroking them with magnets.
Not surprisingly, Mesmer was quickly judged to be a charlatan and left Vienna for Paris, where he became a favorite of Queen Marie Antoinette and her court. Fashionable Parisians flocked to Mesmer's group sessions, where patients would hold hands and dip their feet in tubs of "magnetized" water, while Mesmer danced around them speaking softly and waving a magic wand. Many of his patients reported miraculous cures.
But what Mesmer had actually done, without realizing it, was to hypnotize his patients into thinking they were cured, which in many cases worked because they weren't really very sick to begin with.
Mesmer was eventually discredited by a scientific commission (which included Benjamin Franklin), but his name was immortalized as a synonym for "hypnotize," and the principle that a patient's belief in a cure can be a significant factor in recovery is widely accepted today.
(Adapted from Word Detective - Evan Morris)
Synonyms
allure, attract, beguile, bewitch, captivate, charm, delight, draw, enamor, enchant, enrapture, enthrall, entrance, fascinate, hex, hypnotize, inveigle, kill, knock dead, knock out, magnetize, mesmerize, possess, slay, spell, take, tickle, tickle pink, transport, turn on, vamp, voodoo, wile, win, win over, wow
IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS TODAY
say something like:
"William spoke English with such a wonderful accent, I was totally mesmerised"
