infatuated
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Forms: form: more infatuated
form: most infatuated
Etymology: From infatuate + -ed.
Senses: examples: text: 1771, Elizabeth Griffith, The History of Lady Barton, London: T. Davies & T. Cadell, Volume 3, Letter 60, p. 40,
[…] I did not know her then, or I could never have been so infatuated as I was, to a creature so every way her inferior […]
text: “Gracious goodness,” the cry was, “how infatuated the mother is about that pert and headstrong boy who gives himself the airs of a lord on his blood-horse, and for whom our society is not good enough, and who would marry an odious painted actress off a booth, where very likely he wants to rant himself. …"
ref: 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 15, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC:
text: Augustus—you know my disreputable brother—such a trial to us all—well, Augustus is completely infatuated about her.
ref: 1892, Oscar Wilde, “Act I”, in Lady Windermere's Fan […] :
text: I never saw such an infatuated man. The more she talks and the odder the things she says, the more he’s delighted evidently.
ref: 1908, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 13, in Anne of Green Gables, London: L.C. Page & Co, page 115:
text: Why, the poor woman was infatuated with him. He could have turned her round his little finger. She'd have given him anything he wanted.
ref: 1932, Dorothy L. Sayers, chapter 10, in Have His Carcase, New York: Avon, page 95:
glosses: Foolishly or unreasoningly fond of, attracted to or in love with (someone); besotted,
examples: text: Before I leave Switzerland I cannot but observe, that the Notion of Witchcraft reigns very much in this Country. […] The People are so universally infatuated with the Notion, that if a Cow falls sick, it is Ten to One but an Old Woman is clapt up in Prison for it […]
ref: 1703, Joseph Addison, Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, London: J. Tonson, pages 390–391:
text: She was one of those people who are infatuated with patent medicines and all new-fangled methods of producing health or mending it.
ref: 1876, Mark Twain, chapter 12, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hartford, Connecticut: The American Publishing Company, page 108:
glosses: Excessively fond of or enthusiastic about (something).
examples: text: […] that people must needs be madd or strangely infatuated, that build the chief hope of thir common happiness or safetie on a single person […]
ref: 1660, John Milton, The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, London, page 32:
text: It is possible, that had they not been so infatuated, as to imagine they could retrieve in Germany all that they had lost in America, the British court in the beginning of the year 1759 might have listened to terms of accommodation.
ref: 1763, Oliver Goldsmith, The Martial Review: or, A General History of the Late Wars, London: J. Newbery, page 64:
text: So deep did they go; and so ancient, and corroded, and weedy the aspect of the lowermost puncheons, that you almost looked next for some mouldy corner-stone cask containing coins of Captain Noah, with copies of the posted placards, vainly warning the infatuated old world from the flood.
ref: 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Chapter 110”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
glosses: Foolish, stupid, lacking good judgment (often as a result of some external influence).
Synonyms: sense: foolishly attracted to
word: smitten
sense: foolishly attracted to
word: taken
sense: foolishly attracted to
word: besotted
Derived terms: infatuatedly
uninfatuated
Related terms: fatuity
fatuous
infatuation