incantation
EnglishEdit
Alternative formsEdit
EtymologyEdit
From Middle English incantacioun, from Old French incantation, from Latin incantatio. More at enchant.
PronunciationEdit
NounEdit
incantation (plural incantations)
- The act or process of using formulas and/or usually rhyming words, sung or spoken, with occult ceremonies, for the purpose of raising spirits, producing enchantment, or creating other magical results.
- Synonym: galdr
- 2008, “Red Letter Year”, in Red Letter Year[1], performed by Ani Difranco:
- new years eve we dropped mushrooms / and danced around the house / making music with everything that we found / incantation replaced resolution
- A formula of words used as above.
- (computing, slang) Any esoteric command or procedure.
- 1998, John Purcell, Robert Kiesling, Linux: The Complete Reference: Book 1 (page 412)
- The appropriate incantation of route is shown below; the gw keyword tells it that the next argument denotes a gateway.
- 2005, Kyle Rankin, Linux Multimedia Hacks: Tips & Tools for Taming Images, Audio, and Video:
- There's more than one command incantation to create an AVI. It's all a question of experimenting with the different audio and video codecs.
- 2017, James Pogran, Learning PowerShell DSC (page 11)
- Servers move from being special snowflakes to being disposable numbers on a list that can be created and destroyed without requiring someone to remember the specific incantation to make it work.
- 1998, John Purcell, Robert Kiesling, Linux: The Complete Reference: Book 1 (page 412)
Related termsEdit
TranslationsEdit
process
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formula
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FrenchEdit
EtymologyEdit
Borrowed from Late Latin incantātiō. Synchronically analysable as incanter + -ation.
PronunciationEdit
NounEdit
incantation f (plural incantations)
Related termsEdit
Further readingEdit
- “incantation”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.