captivate.
To make (a person, an animal, etc.) a captive; to take prisoner; to capture, to subdue.
Meaning & usage
To make (a person, an animal, etc.) a captive; to take prisoner; to capture, to subdue.
To capture or control (the mind, etc.); to subdue, to subjugate.
To attract and hold (someone's) attention and interest; to charm, to entrance, to fascinate, to enchain.
Where this word comes from
Learned borrowing from Late Latin captīvātus, the perfect passive participle of captīvō (“to capture”), from Latin captīvus (“captive, prisoner”) (ultimately from capiō (“to capture, seize”), from Proto-Indo-European *kap- (“to hold; to seize”)) + -ō (suffix forming first-conjugation verbs). Equivalent to captive + -ate (verb-forming suffix).
Made captive; taken prisoner; captured, subdued.
Where this word comes from
See Etymology 1. Equivalent to captive + -ate (adjective-forming suffix)
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.