English

Alternative forms

• enchantor (obsolete)
• enchauntor (obsolete, rare)
• enchantour (obsolete)
• enchauntour (obsolete)
• inchanter (obsolete)
• inchantor (obsolete)

Noun

enchanter ‎(plural enchanters, feminine enchantress)

1. One who enchants.
   • 1991, "Critics' Voices" in Time, 11 February, 1991,

     Robert Morse brings back to life the author, wit, bon vivant, self-pitier and true enchanter that was Truman Capote in this Tony-winning one-man performance,

2. A warlock or sorcerer.
   • 14^th C., Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, The Parson's Tale, section 38,

     But lat us go now to thilke horrible sweryng of adjuracioun and conjuracioun, as doon thise false enchauntours or nigromanciens in bacyns ful of water, or in a bright swerd, in a cercle, or in a fir, or in a shulderboon of a sheep.

   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book One, Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006, Canto VII, stanza 35, p. 113,

     No magicke arts hereof had any might, / Nor bloody wordes of bold Enchaunters call, / But all that was not such, as seemd in sight, / Before that shield did fade, and suddeine fall:

   • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Book XI, Chapter VIII,

     He was indeed as bitter an enemy to the savage authority too often exercised by husbands and fathers, over the young and lovely of the other sex, as ever knight-errant was to the barbarous power of enchanters; nay, to say truth, I have often suspected that those very enchanters with which romance everywhere abounds were in reality no other than the husbands of those days; and matrimony itself was, perhaps, the enchanted castle in which the nymphs were said to be confined.

   • 1820, Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ode to the West Wind", lines 2-3,

     Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead / Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

   • 1949, George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Part One, Chapter 1,

     […] Goldstein […] seemed like some sinister enchanter, capable by the mere power of his voice of wrecking the structure of civilization.

Derived terms

• enchanter's nightshade

Translations

French

Etymology

From Old French, from Latin incantāre, present active infinitive of incantō.

Pronunciation

Verb

enchanter

1. (transitive) to enchant

Conjugation

Old French

Etymology

From Latin incantāre, present active infinitive of incantō, from cantus ‎(“song; chant”). Compare chant, chanter, etc.

Verb

enchanter

1. to enchant (to put under the power of an enchantment)
   • Circa 1261, Rutebeuf, Ci commence le miracle de Théophile

     Sui trop fort enchantez.

Conjugation

This verb conjugates as a first-group verb ending in -er. The forms that would normally end in *-ts, *-tt are modified to z, t. Old French conjugation varies significantly by date and by region. The following conjugation should be treated as a guide.

Related terms

• chanter

Descendants

• English: enchant (borrowed)
• French: enchanter