magnetize

present singular third person magnetizes · participle present magnetizing · participle past magnetized · past magnetized · alternative magnetise

1. transitivenatural sciencesTo make magnetic.
2. intransitivenatural sciencesTo become magnetic.
3. obsoletetransitiveTo hypnotize using mesmerism.

   c. 1789, Elizabeth Inchbald, Animal Magnetism: A Farce, Dublin, P. Byron, Act III, p. 82, Lisette let him alone, it is dangerous to push the poor creature to extremities, Doctor, suppose we Magnetize him?

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   Dr. Bertrand tells us that the first patient he ever magnetized, being attacked by a disease of an hysterical character, became subject to convulsions of so long duration and so violent in character, that he had never, in all his practice, seen the like […]

   1864, Robert Dale Owen, “The Convulsionists of St. Médard”, in Atlantic Monthly, volume 13, page 347

4. figurativelytransitiveTo attract, allure or entice; to captivate or entrance.

   Mr. Hamlin’s hand passed carressingly twice or thrice along her sleeve with a peculiar gentleness that seemed to magnetize her.

   1894, Bret Harte, “A Protégée of Jack Hamlin’s”, in A Protégée of Jack Hamlin’s and Other Stories, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, page 49

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   As for Dudley Venner, no beauty in all the world could have so soothed and magnetized him as the very repose and subdued gentleness which the Widow had thought would make the best possible background for her own more salient and effective attractions.

   1861, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., chapter 21, in Elsie Venner

   Subdued and magnetized into submission, Ursula sat turning her tearful eyes from one uncompromising face to the other; but their attention was soon diverted to another weeper.

   1907, Barbara Baynton, edited by Sally Krimmer and Alan Lawson, Human Toll (Portable Australian Authors: Barbara Baynton), St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, published 1980, page 159

   Drawing his material from the black hole of ghetto life and death, Pryor uses his dramatic power to magnetize his listeners into the fire-flash fear of the moment—even as his skewed comic perspective offers distance, safety, reassurance.

   1982 March 29, Richard Corliss, “Richard Pryor’s Back? Twice as Funny”, in Time