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witchery. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
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English
Etymology
From witch + -ery.
Pronunciation
Noun
witchery (countable and uncountable, plural witcheries)
- (uncountable) Witchcraft.
1881, P. Chr. Asbjörnsen , translated by H. L. Brækstad, Round the Yule Log. Norwegian Folk and Fairy Tales, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, →OCLC, page 156:You are right to some extent in what you say. In the olden days people had a stronger belief in all kinds of witchery; now they pretend not to believe in it, that they may be looked upon as sensible and educated people, as you say.
1923 December 28 (first performance), Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan: A Chronicle Play , London: Constable and Company, published 1924, →OCLC, scene vi, page 79:They are determined that I shall be burnt as a witch; and they sent their doctor to cure me; but he was forbidden to bleed me because the silly people believe that a witch’s witchery leaves her if she is bled; so he only called me filthy names.
- (countable) An act of witchcraft.
- (uncountable, figuratively) Allure, charm, magic.
1798 (date written), William Wordsworth, “Part First”, in Peter Bell, a Tale in Verse, London: Strahan and Spottiswoode, ; for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, , published 1819, →OCLC, page 20:At noon, when by the forest's edge / He lay beneath the branches high, / The soft blue sky did never melt / Into his heart,—he never felt / The witchery of the soft blue sky!
1860, Nathaniel Hawthorne, chapter XVII, in The Marble Faun: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni. In Two Volumes.">…], volume I, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC:He beheld the scene in his mind’s eye, through the witchery of many intervening years, and faintly illuminated it as if with starlight instead of this broad glow of moonshine.
1889, Rudyard Kipling, “Only A Subaltern”, in Under the Deodars, Boston: The Greenock Press, published 1899, page 141:The witchery of the dawn turned the grey river-reaches to purple, gold, and opal; and it was as though the lumbering dhoni crept across the splendors of a new heaven.
Synonyms