hypnotize

Watching a trickster hypnotize someone in a live performance might impress you.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 13, 2025

I knew what she meant: I’d only gotten acupuncture once, despite her promise that bodywork could “unstick” the trauma; I refused to let Dr. M hypnotize me.

From Slate ● Aug. 31, 2024

The metallic colors on stage will blur and shine and hypnotize in HD just as well as they did live, and it will feel like luxuriating in a mixed metaphor just as it did live.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 1, 2023

I assume he will now hypnotize himself in front of the nearest screen during breakfast instead of asking questions about what he just read.

From Washington Post ● Feb. 10, 2023

“Well,” he said at last in his friendly, knowing voice, “what are you going to do, hypnotize me?”

From "A Separate Peace" by John Knowles

Others jump on Instagram or TikTok to proclaim that they always hated kittens until one perfect little love nugget materializes at their doorstep and hypnotizes them into bending the knee.

From Salon ● Jul. 23, 2024

A sporadic character in Matt Groening’s animated science fiction sitcom, “Futurama,” the Hypnotoad is a toad with glowing, oscillating eyes that emits a droning hum as it hypnotizes people and animals.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 9, 2023

Their drumming almost hypnotizes me; I can sit there for an hour listening to them.

From New York Times ● Jan. 1, 2023

And in the short story The Euphio Question, an opportunistic businessman capitalizes on an astronomer’s bizarre discovery to create a “euphoriaphone” that hypnotizes society into complacency.

From Science Magazine ● Nov. 10, 2022

Like the fish sort of hypnotizes you into not throwing the harpoon.

From "The Young Man and the Sea" by Rodman Philbrick

I’m so hypnotized by stories of female friendship, especially the way they complicate and evolve over time.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 30, 2026

Adrift, alone and haunted by guilt about that incident in her past, she becomes hypnotized by Peter’s superficially rational-sounding ideas.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 9, 2026

They alternated between huge smiles and hypnotized stares toward videoboards as the “One Shining Moment” highlight montage that is a tournament-capping tradition began to play.

From Seattle Times ● Mar. 20, 2024

How deeply someone can be hypnotized -- known as hypnotizability -- appears to be a stable trait that changes little throughout adulthood, much like personality and IQ.

From Science Daily ● Jan. 4, 2024

The rattle of bracelets that always accompanied her distracted him from his studies, and he had to make an enormous effort not to follow her around the house like a hypnotized chicken.

From "The House of the Spirits: A Novel" by Isabel Allende

For some the answer is easy–especially now that surfing property sites has become as hypnotizing as scrolling through Instagram or TikTok.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 30, 2026

In the segment, Stewart mimicked hypnotizing viewers while repeating the admin’s mantra.

From Salon ● Jul. 8, 2025

The script’s ridiculous rationale — which our hero repeatedly intones like he’s hypnotizing us to believe it — is that certain beekeepers have pledged to prevent colony collapse, both apoidea and homo sapien.

From New York Times ● Jan. 10, 2024

You may find the lull of methodical process hypnotizing.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 19, 2023

Contemptuous of Oppenheimer’s arguments against the Super, he depicted Oppenheimer as a Svengali ruthlessly hypnotizing some of the world’s most sophisticated scientists into joining his opposition campaign.

From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik