INFATUATION

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does infatuation mean? 

• INFATUATION (noun)
  The noun INFATUATION has 3 senses:

1. a foolish and usually extravagant passion or love or admiration

2. temporary love of an adolescent

3. an object of extravagant short-lived passion

  Familiarity information: INFATUATION used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• INFATUATION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A foolish and usually extravagant passion or love or admiration

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Hypernyms ("infatuation" is a kind of...):

passion; passionateness (a strong feeling or emotion)

Derivation:

infatuate (arouse unreasoning love or passion in and cause to behave in an irrational way)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Temporary love of an adolescent

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

calf love; crush; infatuation; puppy love

Hypernyms ("infatuation" is a kind of...):

love (a strong positive emotion of regard and affection)

Derivation:

infatuate (arouse unreasoning love or passion in and cause to behave in an irrational way)

Sense 3

Meaning:

An object of extravagant short-lived passion

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Hypernyms ("infatuation" is a kind of...):

object (the focus of cognitions or feelings)

Derivation:

infatuate (arouse unreasoning love or passion in and cause to behave in an irrational way)

 Context examples 

Lady Elliot had been an excellent woman, sensible and amiable; whose judgement and conduct, if they might be pardoned the youthful infatuation which made her Lady Elliot, had never required indulgence afterwards.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Doubtless their wives loved them, and suffered with them and for them, not because of but in spite of their infatuation for perpetual motion.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Upon this occasion my father said, with an expression of unbounded wonder, “My dearest Victor, what infatuation is this? My dear son, I entreat you never to make such an assertion again.”

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

And how strange an infatuation on Frederick's side!

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Even in the midst of his late infatuation, he had acknowledged Fanny's mental superiority.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Emma, your infatuation about that girl blinds you.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

But your arts and allurements may, in a moment of infatuation, have made him forget what he owes to himself and to all his family.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

That I retired to bed in a most maudlin state of mind, and got up in a crisis of feeble infatuation.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The youthful infatuation of nineteen would naturally blind him to every thing but her beauty and good nature; but the four succeeding years—years, which if rationally spent, give such improvement to the understanding, must have opened his eyes to her defects of education, while the same period of time, spent on her side in inferior society and more frivolous pursuits, had perhaps robbed her of that simplicity which might once have given an interesting character to her beauty.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

In London he would soon learn to wonder at his infatuation, and be thankful for the right reason in her which had saved him from its evil consequences.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)