incantation
Americannoun
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the chanting or uttering of words purporting to have magical power.
-
the formula employed; a spell or charm.
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magical ceremonies.
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magic; sorcery.
- Synonyms:
- wizardry, black magic, witchcraft
-
repetitious wordiness used to conceal a lack of content; obfuscation.
Her prose too often resorts to incantation.
noun
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ritual recitation of magic words or sounds
-
the formulaic words or sounds used; a magic spell
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of incantation
1350–1400; Middle English < Late Latin incantātiōn- (stem of incantātiō ), equivalent to incantāt ( us ) past participle of incantāre to put a spell on, bewitch ( see enchant, -ate 1) + -iōn- -ion
Explanation
"Double, double toil and trouble / Fire burn, and cauldron bubble." These lines, cackled by the Weird Sisters in Shakespeare's Macbeth, are part of the most famous incantation — or magic spell made of words — in English literature. Incantation shares a Latin source with enchant, both of which are related to chant. An incantation, then, summons a thing or action into being with words that are sung, spoken, or written. Long before it became the catchword of stage magicians, abracadabra was regarded as a powerful incantation capable of warding off serious disease. The phrase hocus pocus may be a corruption of a 17th-century incantation spoken during the Roman Catholic liturgy of the Eucharist, "hoc est corpus meum" ("this is my body").
Vocabulary lists containing incantation
Lord of the Flies
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The Hobbit
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"The Devil and Tom Walker" by Washington Irving
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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.
“Monument Eternal” is a talisman, an incantation that shows the author fearless and confident in her challenge to the distorting influence of race in America that James Weldon Johnson identified.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 28, 2026
The culprit for the incantation was the image of the now emblematic Pale Man from “Pan’s Labyrinth,” flaunting eyes on his palms on the back cover of the DVD.
From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 16, 2025
Latvian folk band Tautumeitas took a more ethereal approach with their close-harmony incantation Bur Man Laimi, which literally translates as "a chant for happiness".
From BBC • May 15, 2025
Part 1, “Acknowledgment,” features a plodding incantation, first set by Jimmy Garrison’s bass, then played by the saxophone, then intoned in Coltrane’s husky voice: “A love supreme. A love supreme.”
From New York Times • Feb. 7, 2024
“So you just decided to try out an unknown, handwritten incantation and see what would happen?”
From "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" by J.K. Rowling
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.
