fascination
Americannoun
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fascinations
plural
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the power or action of fascinating.
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the state or an instance of being fascinated.
They watched in fascination.
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a fascinating quality; powerful attraction; charm.
the fascination of foreign travel.
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Cards. a form of solitaire.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of fascination
1595–1605; < Latin fascinātiōn- (stem of fascinātiō ) a bewitching. See fascinate, -ion
Explanation
If diamondback turtles hold a certain fascination for you, you know everything there is to know about them, you talk about them all the time, and maybe you've embroidered one on your pillowcase. Fascination is an irresistible attraction. Be careful to use the right preposition: you've got a fascination with handsome princes, but handsome princes hold a fascination for you. When you have a fascination, it's as if you're bewitched, and — what do you know? — the word goes back to the Latin fascinare, which means "cast a spell on."
Vocabulary lists containing fascination
The Cay
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"The Witch Boy" by Molly Knox Ostertag
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Schooled
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Nancy became a regular presence with her husband on diplomatic travel and an international source of fascination.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 27, 2026
"There is still a lot of fascination with English country life, particularly in America, and she has the ability to bring that to a very large, global audience."
From BBC ● Aug. 22, 2026
Soda was seldom found in the house when I was little, making it a subject of fascination.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 6, 2026
McFadden described his fascination with the relationship between music and imagery, starting with “Star Wars.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 29, 2026
Was it, as a number of interested scientists believed, just the human fascination with patterns?
From "Chasing Vermeer" by Blue Balliett
But one of the main fascinations of Mr. Goode’s quasi-period piece is the ingenious ways his subjects found to circumvent the law, rationalize their crimes and destroy that which they claimed to love.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 4, 2026
Maybe the only purpose in any of this is to prolong morbid fascinations, to twist the knife.
From Slate ● Feb. 23, 2026
One of the eternal fascinations of Test cricket, especially in these Bazballistic times, is that there are almost infinite ways for interpreting what has happened.
From BBC ● Mar. 13, 2024
Take Giamatti’s new podcast, Chinwag, in which he and author Stephen Asma follow their fascinations with things think Sasquatch.
From Washington Times ● Dec. 4, 2023
It was—I say it myself—a rare example of successful resistance to the fascinations of the tempter.
From Quodlibet by John Pendleton Kennedy
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
