mesmerize

• mesmerise (UK)

Back-formation from mesmerism, thus mesmerism +‎ -ize; first attested in 1829.

• IPA^(key): /ˈmɛzməɹaɪz/

• Audio (Southern England):

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mesmerize (third-person singular simple present mesmerizes, present participle mesmerizing, simple past and past participle mesmerized)

1. To exercise mesmerism on; to affect another person, such as to heal or soothe, through the use of animal magnetism.
   • 1936, Rollo Ahmed, The Black Art, London: Long, page 142:

     Mesmer had about a hundred people whom he had instructed as magnetisers, some of whom belonged to the nobility, who also "mesmerised" people by making passes over the affected parts of the body.

3. To spellbind; to enthrall.

   She mesmerized the audience with her tricks

   • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter IV, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC, page 99:

     Then he commenced to talk, really talk, and inside of two flaps of a herring’s fin he had me mesmerized, like Eben Holt’s boy at the town hall show. He talked about the ills of humanity, and the glories of health and Nature and service and land knows what all.

• (exercise mesmerism on): spellbind, hypnotize, enthrall, fascinate

• hypnotize

• “mesmerize”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “mesmerize”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

mesmerize

1. inflection of mesmerizar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative