fascinar

Forms

fascinar (first-person singular present fascino, first-person singular preterite fasciné, past participle fascinado)^[1] The 15th-century texts spell it façinar, with the participle façinado.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin fascinō (“to bewitch”), a learned word.^[3][4][1][2] The Latin verb is a derivative of fascinum (“spell, bewitchment; phallic charm”).^[3][5] De Vaan compares Ancient Greek βάσκανος (báskanos, “sorcerer, slanderer”); if the two are related, both would be loans from an unknown third language.^[6]

In Old French the Latin verb had given Old French fesnier by inheritance, and French fasciner was borrowed later.^[7] Portuguese fascinar is recorded from 1813 and Cunha takes it from French.^[8] Italian affascinare continues the same verb.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The verb first appears in 1425 in the Aojamiento, a treatise on the evil eye, which presents it as the learned term: aojar, que en latin dezimos façinar “to cast the evil eye, which in Latin we call façinar”.^[2] The same text speaks of a sick person façinado “struck by the evil eye”.^[2] Corominas, who did not know these records, dated the word 1600.^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

The first sense was magical: to harm someone with the eye.^[2][10] Nebrija in 1492 glossed Latin fascino as aojar con mal ojo, and in 1599 Jerónimo de Huerta's translation of Pliny speaks of “the common belief in fascinar, or doing harm with the eye”.^[2][11] Autoridades gave this sense first and added a figurative one, “to deceive, dazzle”.^[10] In the 18th century Feijoo wrote of eyes that fascinan the soul.^[11] From then on the sense of irresistible attraction spread.^[11] The DLE now lists “to deceive, dazzle”, “to attract irresistibly” and “to cast the evil eye”, and Moliner puts the mastering of a creature by the gaze, as snakes are said to do with birds, between the old and the new sense.^[4][12]

Timeline

• 1425 – façinar in the Aojamiento, a treatise on the evil eye.^[2]
• c. 1440 – first record of the derivative fascinación.^[3]
• 1492 – Nebrija's Latin–Spanish dictionary renders fascino as “to cast the evil eye”.^[2]
• 1599 – Huerta's translation of Pliny uses fascinar for the evil eye.^[11]
• 1600 – the date Corominas gives for the first record.^[3]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades adds the figurative sense “to deceive, dazzle”.^[10]
• 1736 – Feijoo writes of eyes that are fascinando the soul.^[11]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology “Del lat. fascinare”.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To deceive, dazzle or cloud the judgement of.^[4]
2. (transitive) To fascinate, attract irresistibly: Aquel cuadro la fascinó desde el primer día.^[4][1][12]
3. (transitive) To cast the evil eye on (aojar, hacer mal de ojo).^[4][10]

Word family

• fascinación
• fascinador
• fascinante

Related words

• Latin fascinum
• French fasciner

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. fascinar
3. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. fascinar
4. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. fascinar
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. fascinō
6. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
7. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. fasciner
8. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 1530
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3211
10. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 724
11. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. fascinar
12. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. fascinar
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 489