How to use incantation in a sentence

20 example sentences · noun

Incantation means 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. Example: “Then he produced a string of beads, and after placing it over the scratchings he had made on the soil, jerked out some strange incantation in a voice that thickened and quivered with terror.”

Examples of incantation by meaning

nounA formula of words used as above.

Then he produced a string of beads, and after placing it over the scratchings he had made on the soil, jerked out some strange incantation in a voice that thickened and quivered with terror.1912, Elliott O'Donnell, Werwolves
It is nothing new, these vital lies men tell themselves, muttering and mumbling them like charms and incantations against the powers of Night.1913 August, Jack London, John Barleycorn, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC
Yarrow is one of the aboriginal English plants, and from time immemorial it has been used in incantations and by witches.1922, Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, The Old English Herbals, Longmans, Green and Co.

nounAny esoteric command or procedure.

The appropriate incantation of route is shown below; the gw keyword tells it that the next argument denotes a gateway.1998, John Purcell, Robert Kiesling, Linux: The Complete Reference: Book 1, page 412
There's more than one command incantation to create an AVI.2005, Kyle Rankin, Linux Multimedia Hacks: Tips & Tools for Taming Images, Audio, and Video
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.2017, James Pogran, Learning PowerShell DSC, page 11

More sentences with incantation

Incantations were passed on from receptary to receptary, with little difference between the learned and the popular.2010, Esther Cohen, The Modulated Scream: Pain in Late Medieval Culture, University of Chicago Press, Part I, Chapter 3, p. 95. From the entry receptary
"As an instrument of economic policy, incantation does not permit of minor doubts or scruples."2007, Ian Jack, The Guardian, 22 Sep 07. From the entry permit
Once more our village palpitates With joyous preparations To celebrate the bloomsome rose With proper incantations.1919, Oregon Voter: Magazine of Citizenship--for Busy Men and Women. From the entry bloomsome
And these parents are certainly howling, metaphorically if not literally, the ancient changeling incantation: “Take yours, and bring me mine!”2023, Naomi Klein, “Autism and the Anti-Vax Prequel”, in Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN. From the entry changeling
“He cast an incantation and briefly dehanced their magic.2020 September 17, Debi Ennis Binder, Summerbird Rises, Debi Ennis Binder, page 41. From the entry dehance
"The way I see it, I'm already doing all the work, and I'm doing the spells and incantations," stated Bowolf.2006, Antonio Garza, The House with the Magic Cellar: Realm: I, →ISBN, page 103. From the entry what do you want, a cookie
If an incantation is just slightly off mark, the magic is greatly weakened or does not work at all.2005, Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Viking, →ISBN, page 5. From the entry Hogwartian
If you can manage an attack of the Marthambles, we could persuade one to say an incantation over you.1971, Dorothy Dunnett, The Ringed Castle, Vintage, published 1997, →ISBN, page 224. From the entry marthambles
But it found a place in evil incantations accompanying certain rituals used by necromancers, treasure-hunters, and the like.1936, Rollo Ahmed, The Black Art, London: Long, page 222. From the entry treasure-hunter
The poem ends with the Hindu incantation, like the first shower of long-looked-for rain, shantih, shantih, shantih, meaning: "The Peace which passeth understanding."1950 March 6, “Reflections: Mr. Eliot”, in Time, retrieved 26 Aug 2017. From the entry peace that passeth understanding
So in a week's time she was beginning to hearken to her mother when she spoke of incantations and charms for restoring love.1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide. From the entry on the brink of
In "The Dunwich Horror" the other-dimensional creatures are thwarted by the proper incantations, while witchcraft and the new Einsteinian universe appear cheek-by-jowl in "Dreams in the Witch House."2012, Darrell Schweitzer, Discovering H.P. Lovecraft, page 9. From the entry cheek-by-jowl
Or, while marvelling at the ingenuity of Nature, one can sing incantations that cause the clouds to assume fantastic shapes: dinosaurs, glyptodons and pterosauruses frolic across the sky.1987, Alberto Manguel, Gianni Guadalupi, “Dreams, Lake of”, in The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, expanded edition, San Diego, Calif.…. From the entry pterosaurus
The women chanted their incantations, the warriors fired their guns and yelled, the puellas danced and sang ditty songs, and such another jubilee I never did see.1959, Hugh D. Corwin, Comanche & Kiowa Captives in Oklahoma & Texas, pages 193–194. From the entry puella

Meaning of incantation

noun 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.
noun A formula of words used as above.
noun Any esoteric command or procedure.

Full definition of incantation

Questions about incantation in a sentence

How do you use incantation in a sentence?: Incantation is used as a noun. For example: “Then he produced a string of beads, and after placing it over the scratchings he had made on the soil, jerked out some strange incantation in a voice that thickened and quivered with terror.”
What is a short sentence with incantation?: ““He cast an incantation and briefly dehanced their magic.”
What does incantation mean?: Incantation means 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.

Adapted from Wiktionary: incantation (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “How to use incantation in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/incantation. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.