blandishment
(ˈblændɪʃmənt)
[f. as prec. + -ment: cf. OF. blandissement.]
1. Gently flattering speech or action; cajolery.
| 1591 Spenser M. Hubberd 1274 He gan enquire..of the Foxe, and his false blandishment. 1622 Bacon Henry VII, Wks. (1860) 477 He..would use strange sweetness and blandishments of words. 1711 Addison Spect. No. 128 ¶4 Nature has given all the Arts of Soothing and Blandishment to the Female. 1880 L. Stephen Pope iv. 96 He was not..inaccessible to aristocratic blandishments. |
2. fig. Attraction, allurement. concr. Anything that pleases or allures.
| 1594 Greene Look. Glasse (1861) 142 Bear hence these wretched blandishments of sin (Taking off his crown and robe). 1660 Stanley Hist. Philos. (1701) 609/1 If any external blandishments happen, they increase not the chief good. 1875 J. Bennet Winter Medit. ii. xi. 369 His thoughts..were ever on the blandishments of imperial Rome. |