I wrote that a girl in class was fawning over her teacher. I meant that she was infatuated with him and looking at him dreamy-eyed.
But when I looked it up, I found out that's not what fawning means. This is the definition: "to praise someone too much and give them a lot of attention that is not sincere, in order to get a positive reaction" and "Fawning is perhaps best understood as 'people-pleasing.' According to Walker, who coined the term 'fawn' as it relates to trauma, people with the fawn response are so accommodating of others' needs that they often find themselves in codependent relationships."
So "fawn" is actually a negative term where the person doing it is after something. Does anyone else think "fawning over" is what I thought?