charisma

charisma

1. This is originally a Greek word meaning ‘gift of grace’. It acquired its current meaning ‘a gift or power of leadership or authority’ when the sociologist Max Weber used it in this way (in German) in 1922. It has been used widely in association with major political figures, including J. F. Kennedy, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Nelson Mandela, and is now used as a synonym for ‘influence’ or ‘authority’ or even ‘attraction’ or ‘charm’ in various contexts, impersonal as well as personal:

• Spacecraft sent there in recent years have dispelled legends and added reams of sound, ordered data, yet the charisma of Mars remains —San Francisco Examiner, 1976

• She presents well, has charm, charisma and vitality, but comes across as severely intellectual —Business, 1991.

 

2. The adjective charismatic, in addition to its religious meanings (as in the charismatic movement), has developed in line with charisma and can be used of a person, an achievement such as performance, or an abstraction such as leadership, personality, presence, or quality. There is also an adverb charismatically:

• He had a charismatic quality about him that had long made him one of Europe's most eligible bachelors —A. MacNeill, 1989

• She blossomed from a precocious teenager…into a charismatically attractive woman with towering talent. —S. Stone, 1989.