Mesmerizing

I was never aware of the fact I was using mesmerizing in the wrong context, until I saw an incoming link from Alan saying that:

   Arthur makes up a great word for a being in a deep daydream: mesmerizing1

I have always used mesmerizing in the context of pondering or wondering, well, the state of daydreaming as Alan says: little did I know that it actually has to do with enthralling the crowd, as in ‘captivating the audience’. The question remains, where did I actually get that word from, and to be honest: I think this word stuck with me before I even decided to settle down in North America. The next coming days, I’ll be thinking hard to find out why I decided to use that particular word to describe the state of ‘mindlessly thinking about good things past’.

On the other hand: you could also see it as a contribution to enrich the English language, as so many others before me have done. Unintentional, of course.

1 No link here, so literal quotation from Alan’s Blog

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