Dictionary

incantatory en · ADJ

Meanings

1. Constituting, employing, dealing with, or suitable for use in incantation.
   • 1888, Lafcadio Hearn, “A Midsummer Trip to the West Indies,” Second Paper, XIII, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Volume 77, Number 459, August 1888, p. 332, A trained musician might protest against so strange a manner of ringing the chimes; but he could not possibly deny that it has impressiveness: it is wild, barbaric, incantatory—it is a monstrous musical conjuration.
   • Thenceforward the witch without a name held continuous receptions in the boudoir, and the boudoir gradually grew into an abode of mystery and strangeness, hypnotizing the entire house. People went thither; people came back; and those who had not been pictured to themselves something very incantatory, and little by little they made up their minds to go. 1912, Arnold Bennett, “The Widow of the Balcony”, in The Matador of the Five Towns, and Other Stories, London: Methuen, page 169:
   • Fortune tellers, Juglers, Geomancers, and the like incantatory impostors, though commonly men of inferiour rank, and from whom without illumination they can expect no more then from themselves, do daily and professedly delude them. 1646, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, London: Edw. Dod & Nath. Ekins, published 1650, Book I, Chapter 3, p. 9:
2. Resembling incantation.
   • The film's most persistent (and pernicious) image is of a train, clanking and rambling down a track. Again and again and again, down the track to Auschwitz. It is incantatory; the trains exude evil, huff and grind down the track, very slowly. 1986 February 1, Robin Lippincott, “Shoah (review)”, in Gay Community News, volume 13, number 28, page 15:

Forms