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PlainSpell

fascination

/fæsɪˈneɪʃən/noun

fascination is a noun meaning “The state or condition of being fascinated” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-A-S-C-I-N-A-T-I-O-N and has 4 syllables, and it appears 3.0 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of fascination is fascinations.

What does fascination mean?

noun

  1. 1

    archaicThe act of bewitching, or enchanting

  2. 2

    The state or condition of being fascinated.

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

  3. 3

    Something which fascinates.

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

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce fascination?

  • US /fæsɪˈneɪʃən/

Fascination has 4 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-fascination.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of fascination

  • fascinations plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is fascination?

Fascination appears 3.0 times per million words in written English, the 15,368th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Fascination in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchfascination (the act of fascinating, bewitching, or…)
GermanFaszination (the act of fascinating, bewitching, or…)
Portuguesefascinação (the act of fascinating, bewitching, or…), fascínio (the state or condition of being fascinated)
Spanishfascinación (the act of fascinating, bewitching, or…)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does fascination come from?

From Latin fascinare ("to bewitch"), possibly from Ancient Greek βασκαίνιεν (baskaínien, “to speak ill of; to curse”). Morphologically fascinate + -ion.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).