conjure [ME] The earliest meanings of conjure were ‘to call on in the name of some divine or supernatural being’ and ‘to appeal solemnly to, entreat’—the -jure bit of the word is from Latin jurare ‘to swear, conspire’, which gave us words such as *jury. A more familiar early meaning was ‘to call on a supernatural being to appear by means of a magic ritual’, from which the sense ‘to make something appear as if by magic’ developed. A name to conjure with [L19th] comes from the idea of someone summoning the spirit of an influential or powerful person by saying their name out loud. Conjuror was used literally from the Middle Ages, and used as an entertainer using magic tricks from the early 18th century.