amuse

i. & t. [Eng. muse, v.i.; Fr. amuser to divert; from muser = to loiter, to trifle; Ital. musare = to lounge; Ger. mü ig idle.] + A. Intransitive: 1. To muse, to think, to reflect; to be absent in mind, owing to the concentration of the attention on the thoughts with which one is occupied at the time. "Or in some pathle wilderne amusing, Plucking the mo y bark of some old tree." B. Transitive: Lee: Lucius Junius Brutus, 1. 2. *1. To cause to muse; to occupy or engage the attention, and consequently to divert it from other objects. "Being amused with grief, fear, and fright, he could not find a house."-Fuller: Ch. Hist. of Britain, bk. ix., § 14. "Such a religion as should afford both sad and solemn objects to amuse and affect the pensive part of the soul."- South : Sermons. *2. To keep a person from departing, or from acting, by telling him some frivolous story which causes him to lose his time and his opportunity; to delude by vain promises, or expectations, or pretences; to cheat, to leceive. "Bishop Henry, on the other side, amused her with dubious answers, and kept her in suspense for solne days" -Swift : Character of K. Stephen. "And then for the Pharisees, whom our Saviour represents as the very vilest of men, and the greatest of cheats; we have them amusing the world with pre tences of a more refined devotion, while hile their heart was at that time in their neighbour's coffers."- South : Serm., ii. 153. 196 In this, as in other senses, it is sometimes used reciprocally, when it means to deceive or delude one's self with some vain imagination. "They think they see visions, and are arrived to some extraordinary revelations: ons: when, indeed, they do but dream dreams, and amuse themselves with the fantast ick ideas of a busy imagination."-More: Decay of Piety. 3. To entertain or divert the mind; to inspire it with agreeable emotions; in general, though not always, attended with mirth. " Amus'd at ease, the godlike man they found, Pleas'd with the solemn harp's harmonious sound." Pope: Homer's Iliad , bk. ix., 245, 246, "With these went all who live by amusing the leisure of others, from the painter and the comie poet, down to the ropedancer and the merry andrew." -Macaulay: Hist . Eng ., ch. L a-mu's ed, pa. par. [AMUSE.] " Amused spectators of this bustling stage." Cowper: Task, bk. v. ta-muş-ee, s. [Eng. amuse; -ee.] The person amused, as contradistinguished from the amuser. given the amuser, the amusee must also be given."-Carlyle: Heroes, Lect. IIL