glamour

In the Middle Ages words like Latin grammatica and Middle English gramer, “grammar,” meant not only the study of language and literature, but all sorts of learning. Since almost all learning was expressed in Latin, which most people did not understand, it was commonly believed that subjects such as magic and astrology were also part of “grammar.” People became suspicious of students of “grammar,” who were thought to practice the dark arts. In Scotland in the 1700s the word glamer or glamour, an altered form of grammar, meant “a magic spell.” As glamour passed into more general English, it lost this sense and just came to mean “a mysterious attractiveness.”