infatuate

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   to fill someone with an intense but unreasoning and often short-lived attraction or admiration, usually used in the passive

   He was infatuated with the singer and ignored every warning from his friends.

2. 2
   verb

   dated or literary: to deprive someone of sound judgment through a delusive idea, passion, or enthusiasm

   The promise of effortless wealth infatuated the speculators and blinded them to the risk.

From Latin infatuare ("make foolish"), based on in- ("into") + fatuus ("foolish"), through its participle infatuatus. English first used the verb for making someone foolish; by the seventeenth century it had developed the now-dominant sense of inspiring a passion that overcomes reason.

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