Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To inspire with unreasoning love or attachment.
  • transitive verb To cause to behave foolishly.
  • adjective Infatuated.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To make foolish; reduce to foolishness, or show the foolishness of.
  • To affect with folly; inspire with an extravagant or foolish passion beyond the control of reason; excite to extravagant feeling or action: as, to be infatuated with pride, or with a woman.
  • Infatuated.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To make foolish; to affect with folly; to weaken the intellectual powers of, or to deprive of sound judgment.
  • transitive verb To inspire with a foolish and extravagant passion.
  • adjective Infatuated.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb transitive To inspire with unreasoning love or attachment.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb arouse unreasoning love or passion in and cause to behave in an irrational way

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin īnfatuāre, īnfatuāt- : in-, causative pref.; see in– + fatuus, foolish.]

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word infatuate.

Examples

  • It will be a remarkable woman that will ever infatuate him now.

    CHAPTER XIV 2010

  • He promised to ‘try and infatuate him to come’, but did not think it would be of any use.

    Later Articles and Reviews W.B. Yeats 2000

  • So back to Sinat, as previously commented by someone, it was a gambling game too, and I suppose, just as with the VLT players, no profound strategy is required to infatuate people for hours or days if you believe you're the next great winner.

    Revisal to my Sinat game 2009

  • I remind myself that I'm not a 16 year-old kid with raging hormones with a propensity to infatuate.

    jaimewolf Diary Entry jaimewolf 2008

  • We infatuate humanity with overwrought images of success and riches.

    Dying America Needs A Miracle 2007

  • But he had an infatuate haughtiness as to the impossibility of his retreating, and as to his right to dictate your course.

    Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions 2007

  • Classic themes like love, despair, life, death, and hope still infatuate us.

    Why You Should Read Poetry...Yes, Poetry William Harryman 2007

  • She was beautiful - lovely - could infatuate art......but the gods gave him a box, in whitch they closed all evil.

    Louise Brooks (November 14, 1906 – August 8, 1985) mrdantefontana 2006

  • To such a degree does blind fury infatuate men, when once the vehemence of contention has prevailed, that they carelessly despise death, when placed before their eyes.

    Commentary on Genesis - Volume 1 1509-1564 1996

  • In the meantime, audacious scribblers arise, as from our own bosom, who not only obscure the light of sound doctrine with clouds of error, or infatuate the simple and the less experienced with their wicked ravings, but by a profane license of skepticism, allow themselves to uproot the whole of Religion.

    Commentary on Genesis - Volume 1 1509-1564 1996

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.