fascinator

From fascinate + -or.

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fascinator (plural fascinators)

1. (literal) A fascinating person or thing.
   • 2009 January 18, Charles Isherwood, “Hedda Forever: An Antiheroine for the Ages”, in New York Times‎^[1]:

     A more repellent personality would be hard to imagine, and yet Hedda Gabler is one of the eternal fascinators of the world stage.

2. (fashion) A delicate, often frivolous head decoration worn on the hair, primarily by women. [from late 20th c.]
   • 2023 May 6, Chloe Mac Donnell, “Coronation fashion sprang few surprises – but all eyes were on Penny Mordaunt”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:

     Westminster Abbey was peppered with everything from neat pillbox hats to netted fascinators.

   • 2024 July 26, Arifa Akbar, “Paris Olympics opening ceremony review – soaring ambition deflated by patchy delivery”, in The Guardian‎^[3], →ISSN:

     Why, for example, was Lady Gaga the first act? Surrounded by pink ostrich feathers and wearing a fascinator that looked like a feather quill atop her head, she put on her best French accent to sing Mon truc en plumes (originally by Zizi Jeanmaire) but it still looked like a scrappy, tacky, riverbank cabaret by an American pop star.

   • 2025 May 5, Brock Colyar, “It Must Be Nice to Be a West Village Girl”, in New York‎^[4], archived from the original on 19 May 2025:

     On a recent night when I visited, a group of girls had taken over an entire section, all of them wearing black fascinators as if attending a funeral. The hostess explained that it was a young woman named Mallory’s “RIP to my 20s” birthday dinner.

3. (dated, US) A type of wool or lace headscarf.

• fascinatress
• hatinator

• "Fascinator", page 362 in Dictionary of American Regional English, volume 2, 1985.

• fascinator on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

fascinātor

1. second/third-person singular future passive imperative of fascinō

• “fascinator”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• fascinator in Ramminger, Johann (16 July 2016 (last accessed)), Neulateinische Wortliste: Ein Wörterbuch des Lateinischen von Petrarca bis 1700‎^[5], pre-publication website, 2005-2016

Borrowed from French fascinateur or Latin fascinator. By surface analysis, fascina +‎ -tor.

fascinator m or n (feminine singular fascinatoare, masculine plural fascinatori, feminine/neuter plural fascinatoare)

1. fascinator