(n.) The act or process of using formulas sung or spoken, with occult ceremonies, for the purpose of raising spirits, producing enchantment, or affecting other magical results; enchantment.
(n.) A formula of words used as above.
Example Sentences:
(1) It incants the motto of the Bill Shankly school of cliche: that football is not a matter of life and death, it is far more important.
(2) Judi Dench and Dustin Hoffman star as neighbours Mrs Silver and Mr Hoppy, who are brought together when Hoppy whispers a magic growth spell to Silver’s pet tortoise, then attempts to bring the incantation’s power to fruition.
(3) Place names and plant names assume the status of chants or litanies: spectral taxa incanted as elegy, or as a means to conjure back.
(4) Take the cue from Classic FM's manic incantation, "Just relax".
(5) Elements of Western psychological medical methods (such as environmental manipulation, enquiry into the unconscious motivation of behaviour, and suggestion through incantation) were evident in this practice, although applied without the systematic coherence of clinical medicine.
(6) Beyoncé’s use of “slay” is an additional embrace of the language of the black queer community and, in its repetition, it’s an incantation that can slay haters, slay patriarchy, to slay white supremacy.
(7) It was, said one contemporary, like watching "a magician, performing his incantations in public".
(8) She'd snarl like an angry Dylan or croon with tenderness, punctuating Lenny Kaye's guitar work with murmured incantations.
(9) A familiar ritual played out each Saturday night in autumn, beginning with tension-creating music and the basso profundo of Peter Dickson, whose pause-laden announcements made his voice as recognisable to British viewers as Richard Dimbleby's had been half a century earlier, and ending with the magical incantations "calls cost 50p from landlines, mobile networks may vary" and "please ask the bill-payer's permission", which caused millions of digits to press urgently on keypads.
(10) Some interesting points that emanated from the study include the healers' explanation that a person's essence is transmitted to his personal effects, which are used with incantation to inflict the deaf person.
(11) Long to reign over us – that old incantation has worked, so next week the Queen’s reign becomes the longest ever.
(12) In his article, 'The Effectiveness of Symbols,' Lévi-Strauss contends that the details of a Cuna birth incantation evoke specific physiological responses from parturient women, aiding them through difficult labors.
(13) Witches at Their Incantations (perhaps illustrating his own poem Strega), in the National Gallery, is a hideous nocturnal fantasy of the black sabbath, full of skeletal monstrosities, a hanged man, stolen babies, naked hags and evil brews.
(14) "I have friends who come by and say 'Om' [a Buddhist incantation]," he said.
(15) Inside the Palais, the delegates recite his name like an incantation.
(16) The meme artists got to work on that one, imagining covfefe might be Trump’s safe word, or else an incantation that could summon an ancient spirit wizard from the deep .
(17) But there were also real concession to the Kurds: the scrapping of Turkish nationalist school incantations that Kurdish children have to intone every day; the likelihood of bigger and easier Kurdish representation in the Ankara parliament; Kurdish parties allowed to campaign in their own language and to benefit more easily from state funding.
(18) His argument, which analyzes the incantation as a text divorced from its social setting, has drawn criticism from students of Cuna society on a number of substantive points, primarily centering around the difficulties that the special linguistic form of ritual language would present to a non-adept.
(19) If the patient lacks a thorough comprehension of the mythic details, how can the incantation change her physiological processes?
(20) Yet institutions and ideologies cannot survive by mere incantation or reminders of past horrors.
Recitation
Definition:
(n.) The act of reciting; rehearsal; repetition of words or sentences.
(n.) The delivery before an audience of something committed to memory, especially as an elocutionary exhibition; also, that which is so delivered.
(n.) The rehearsal of a lesson by pupils before their instructor.
Example Sentences:
(1) When accused of muttering it while reciting Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo, during filming of BBC2s Top Gear, he said he had not, that he would absolutely never use "the most racist word of them all".
(2) For one day only, the criteria for success shift from the ability to do long division to the ability to do the long jump, a knack for reciting facts to a knack for running fast.
(3) As a central feature of every ceremony, Nepali shamans (jhãkris) publicly recite lengthy oral texts, whose meticulous memorization constitutes the core of shamanic training.
(4) These days large theatres such as the Met in New York still use the recitative, but most productions tend to opt for the original dialogue, while a few, including Sally Potter's production for ENO in 2007, attempt to make do without either.
(5) In fact, there are two – three if you count the recitation of the pledge of allegiance.
(6) He even recited Tennyson's poem to a classroom of Russian children in Moscow, possibly a tad insensitively, given that it was about an incident in the Crimean war, though they nodded politely.
(7) In the footage, published on the newspaper's website , Clarkson appears to recite the beginning of the children's nursery rhyme "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe..." before appearing to mumble: "Catch a nigger by his toe."
(8) In the unaired version – which was later passed to the Mirror – the presenter then appears to recite the children's counting rhyme and use the N-word under his breath before pointing at the Toyota and shrugging: "Toyota it is."
(9) Commuters streaming into the bustling streets of the capital Kuala Lumpur earlier in the morning were overwhelmingly black-clad, while state television aired recitations from the Qur’an and showed photos of the victims.
(10) There are no ahhs of amazement as though you’re a pet hamster who’s suddenly executed a triple backflip while reciting the spoken-word bit of Shake It Off .
(11) He could recite moral rules; he could even, when asked to do so in court, recite Kant's famous categorical imperative .
(12) Accessible to non-specialists, the system conveyed by these recitations acts to validate shamanic intervention as a significant and intelligible activity.
(13) At the time, it felt like a story I recited so I didn't go under.
(14) One woman turned from her seat to survey the crowd: “I think the whole town is here.” The meeting began only after men removed their farm hats and Stetsons to recite the Lord’s Prayer.
(15) It was delightful to explore the modernised, easier to navigate site and listen again to Tennyson reading his The Charge of the Light Brigade, Sylvia Plath reciting Parliament Hill Fields , Hillaire Beloc singing Tarantella .
(16) One female mummy is displayed with a translation of an offering inscription, which visitors will be invited to recite to ensure her food supply in the next world.
(17) The words recited with the eight strokes of the comb hint at the uneven path ahead: "First comb for luck, second for longevity, third for contentment, fourth for safety.
(18) Daniels is not a bad actor, but the show gives him nothing to do except recite Aaron Sorkin’s self-important lines in a self important voice.
(19) Evacuated to Bournemouth at the outbreak of war, Drummond went to hear the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and a recital by Kathleen Ferrier, whose biography he was to film 20 years later in what was probably his most successful television production.
(20) When you read, as a Swede, that we have the third highest number of reported cases of violence against women in the EU – 46% of the Swedish women surveyed had such experiences, just behind Denmark's 52% and Finland's 47% – it's almost instinctive to recite the reasons why this is actually a good thing.