to prepossess any one in favour of some person or thing that does not deserve it, so that he cannot easily be disabused. The word comes from the Latin fatuus, fool; from fari, to speak out, which is borrowed from the Greek φανταζομαι, whence φαντασια, which signifies the same with vates in Latin, or prophet in English; and the reason is, because their prophets or priests used to be seized with a kind of madness, when they began to give out their predictions, or deliver oracles.

The Romans called those persons infatuati, who fancied that they had seen visions, or imagined that the god Faunus, whom they called Fatuus, had appeared to them. This word is more generally applied by the moderns to persons who are what the vulgar call bewitched, or under some peculiar destiny which it appears impossible for them to evade or escape.