incantation

English

Alternative forms

encantation

Etymology

From Middle English incantacioun, from Old French incantation, from Latin incantatio. More at enchant.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /ɪnkænˈteɪʃən/
Audio (General Australian): (file)
Rhymes: -eɪʃən

Noun

incantation (plural incantations)

The act or process of using formulas and/or usually rhyming words, sung or spoken, with occult ceremonies, for the purpose of raising spirits, producing enchantment, or creating other magical results.
Synonym: galdr
- 1922, Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, The Old English Herbals‎^[1], Longmans, Green and Co.:
  Yarrow is one of the aboriginal English plants, and from time immemorial it has been used in incantations and by witches. Country folk still regard it as one of our most valuable herbs, especially for rheumatism.
- 2008, “Red Letter Year”, in Red Letter Year‎^[2], performed by Ani Difranco:
  new years eve we dropped mushrooms / and danced around the house / making music with everything that we found / incantation replaced resolution
A formula of words used as above.
- 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene iii], page 115, column 2:
  My ancient Incantations are too weake, / And hell too ſtrong for me to buckle with:
- 1889, Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat […] ‎^[3]:
  We did not know what scrambled eggs were, and we fancied that it must be some Red Indian or Sandwich Islands sort of dish that required dances and incantations for its proper cooking.
- 1912, Elliott O'Donnell, Werwolves‎^[4]:
  Then he produced a string of beads, and after placing it over the scratchings he had made on the soil, jerked out some strange incantation in a voice that thickened and quivered with terror.
- 1913 August, Jack London, John Barleycorn, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC:
  It is nothing new, these vital lies men tell themselves, muttering and mumbling them like charms and incantations against the powers of Night. The voodoos and medicine men and the devil-devil doctors were the fathers of metaphysics.
(computing, slang) Any esoteric command or procedure.
- 1998, John Purcell, Robert Kiesling, Linux: The Complete Reference: Book 1, page 412:
  The appropriate incantation of route is shown below; the gw keyword tells it that the next argument denotes a gateway.
- 2005, Kyle Rankin, Linux Multimedia Hacks: Tips & Tools for Taming Images, Audio, and Video:
  There's more than one command incantation to create an AVI. It's all a question of experimenting with the different audio and video codecs.
- 2017, James Pogran, Learning PowerShell DSC, page 11:
  Servers move from being special snowflakes to being disposable numbers on a list that can be created and destroyed without requiring someone to remember the specific incantation to make it work.