infatuate
Americanverb (used with object)
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to inspire or possess with a foolish or unreasoning passion, as of love.
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to affect with folly; make foolish or fatuous.
adjective
noun
verb
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to inspire or fill with foolish, shallow, or extravagant passion
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to cause to act foolishly
adjective
noun
Usage
What does infatuate mean? To infatuate is to strongly affect someone in a way that causes them to be absorbed with an extreme passion, especially in a way that makes them foolish or unreasonable about it.Infatuate is especially used in a passive way—we usually say that a person is infatuated by someone or something, rather than saying that someone or something infatuates a person.The state of being infatuated is infatuation. This is often used to refer to the state of someone who has fallen in love with a person without really knowing them. But it can refer to any obsessive or passionate focus, such as on an activity or goal. A person who’s affected this way can be described with the adjective infatuated.The word infatuation can also refer to the object of this focus, as in Who’s that you’re staring at—your latest infatuation? Someone or something considered an infatuation can be described as infatuating—meaning it has the power to infatuate.Very rarely, infatuate can be used as an adjective meaning infatuated or as a noun meaning an infatuated person.Example: She’s usually infatuated by her crushes to the point that she can’t see their flaws.
Other Word Forms
- infatuator noun
- self-infatuated adjective
- uninfatuated adjective
Etymology
Origin of infatuate
1425–75; late Middle English < Latin infatuātus, past participle of infatuāre. See in- 2, fatuous, -ate 1
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.
If we were then the logical thing to do would be for insiders to bring hundreds of companies public to sell to naive investors infatuated with AI.
Despite being separated by distance, age and language, he and the woman became infatuated with one another, prosecutors said.
Their chaotic summer journey is joined by Brett’s fiancé, the troubled Mike Campbell, the charming but cynical Bill Gorton and the perpetually lost Robert Cohn, who is hopelessly infatuated with Brett.
From Salon
His ex-wife told jurors he "would dream about being like James Bond" and watched films about MI5 and MI6 as he was "infatuated with it".
From BBC
The infatuated narrator toys with presenting his love-object with a copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets and dreams of bringing him over to London.
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.
