English
magnetize
Verb

magnetize (magnetizes, present participle magnetizing; past and past participle magnetized)

  1. (transitive, physics) To make magnetic.
  2. (intransitive, physics) To become magnetic.
  3. (obsolete, transitive) To hypnotize using mesmerism.
    • circa 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?
    • 1864, Robert Dale Owen, “The Convulsionists of St. Médard” in The Atlantic, Volume 13, p. 347,
      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 […]
  4. (figurative, transitive) To attract, allure or entice; to captivate or entrance.
    • 1861, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Elsie Venner, Chapter 21,
      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.
    • 1894, Bret Harte, “A Protégée of Jack Hamlin’s” in A Protégée of Jack Hamlin’s and Other Stories, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p. 49,
      Mr. Hamlin’s hand passed carressingly twice or thrice along her sleeve with a peculiar gentleness that seemed to magnetize her.
    • 1982, Richard Corliss, “Richard Pryor’s Back? Twice as Funny,” Time (magazine), 29 March, 1982,[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953434,00.html]
      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.
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