Pronounced: KAHK-urh, verb/noun
Notes: I thought of the idiom “according to Cocker”, but that has nothing to do with this word
Yesterday’s word
The word Svengali is “a person who manipulates or exerts excessive control over another”
First usage
Our word came into English in the 1910s
Background / Comments
Our word came from a novel by George du Maurier: Trilby, published in 1984. A model named Trilby falls under the spell of a villainous musician and hypnotist named Svengali – through hypnosis he trains her voice and she becomes a singing star. Svengali completely subjugates her. The villain of the book impressed people enough that his named passed into the language.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 