fascination

plural fascinations

1. archaiccountableuncountableThe act of bewitching, or enchanting

   Little disappointed, then, she turned attention to "Chat of the Social World," gossip which exercised potent fascination upon the girl's intelligence.

   1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter I (Anarchy), page 373, column 2

   Synonyms: enchantment, witchcraft, bewitching, bewitchment, spellcasting, enchanting, enchantment, ensorcellment

2. countableuncountableThe state or condition of being fascinated.

   To my fascination, the skies turned all kinds of colours.

   2 more examples

   Sliding down the shaft he lay still, the spear jutting above him its full length, like a horrible stalk growing out of his back. The girl stared down at him in morbid fascination, until Khemsa took her arm and led her through the gate.

   1934, Robert Ervin Howard, The People of the Black Circle

   But the compensations are many: changing scenes, long days out of doors, freedom from the bondage of conventional life, and above all, the fascination of living among peoples of primitive simplicity and yet of a civilization so ancient that it makes all that is oldest in the West seem raw and crude and unfinished.

   1913, Elizabeth Kimball Kendall, A Wayfarer in China

   Synonyms: romance

3. countableuncountableSomething which fascinates.

   Life after death had always been a great fascination to him.

   1 more example

   Though more thoughtful than Madame de Mercœur, yet it asked far more knowledge of society—that wilderness of small intricacies—for her to penetrate into the motives of those who seemed so suddenly struck with her fascination; but she was too clear-headed to be deceived, and set it all down under one general belief in caprice.

   1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XXI, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 244