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:
Four years ago, Times columnist Nicolas Goldberg wrote an opinion piece about his fascination with what to him sounded like a profound project about the meaning of time.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 25, 2026
The women are nevertheless linked—by their resilience, their unhappy dealings with Andreas and, intriguingly, their shared fascination with octopuses.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 15, 2026
GLP-1 drugs have transformed the public conversation around appetite and weight loss; “ThinTok” has given restriction a new algorithmic sheen; conspicuously thin celebrity bodies are once again objects of fascination.
From Salon ● Sep. 15, 2026
Bate was born in Carmarthen, Wales, in 1878 and developed a fascination with the natural world from an early age.
From BBC ● Sep. 7, 2026
At last he knew what Dumbledore would have seen when he looked in the Mirror of Erised, and why Dumbledore had been so understanding of the fascination it had exercised over Harry.
From "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J.K. Rowling
It’s cast with some of the more attractive young people available, while the characters of “Sterling Point” looks like standard-issue teenagers with common fascinations.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 5, 2026
Maybe the only purpose in any of this is to prolong morbid fascinations, to twist the knife.
From Slate ● Feb. 23, 2026
Geometric order and water’s fluid movement were special fascinations.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 18, 2024
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
This haunting similarity is one of the fascinations of legend study.
From Legends of Gods and Ghosts (Hawaiian Mythology) Collected and Translated from the Hawaiian by W. D. (William Drake) Westervelt
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.
