infatuated
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Verb
[edit]infatuated
- simple past and past participle of infatuate
Adjective
[edit]infatuated (comparative more infatuated, superlative most infatuated)
- Foolishly or unreasoningly fond of, attracted to or in love with (someone); besotted,
- 1771, Elizabeth Griffith, The History of Lady Barton, London: T. Davies & T. Cadell, Volume 3, Letter 60, p. 40,[1]
- […] 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 […]
- 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:
- “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. …"
- 1892, Oscar Wilde, “Act I”, in Lady Windermere's Fan […] [2]:
- Augustus—you know my disreputable brother—such a trial to us all—well, Augustus is completely infatuated about her.
- 1908, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 13, in Anne of Green Gables[3], London: L.C. Page & Co, page 115:
- I never saw such an infatuated man. The more she talks and the odder the things she says, the more he’s delighted evidently.
- 1932, Dorothy L. Sayers, chapter 10, in Have His Carcase[4], New York: Avon, page 95:
- 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.
- 1771, Elizabeth Griffith, The History of Lady Barton, London: T. Davies & T. Cadell, Volume 3, Letter 60, p. 40,[1]
- Excessively fond of or enthusiastic about (something).
- 1703, Joseph Addison, Remarks on Several Parts of Italy[5], London: J. Tonson, pages 390–391:
- 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 […]
- 1876, Mark Twain, chapter 12, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer[6], Hartford, Connecticut: The American Publishing Company, page 108:
- She was one of those people who are infatuated with patent medicines and all new-fangled methods of producing health or mending it.
- (obsolete) Foolish, stupid, lacking good judgment (often as a result of some external influence).
- 1660, John Milton, The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth[7], London, page 32:
- […] that people must needs be madd or strangely infatuated, that build the chief hope of thir common happiness or safetie on a single person […]
- 1763, Oliver Goldsmith, The Martial Review: or, A General History of the Late Wars[8], London: J. Newbery, page 64:
- 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.
- 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:
- 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.