WITCH • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Witch

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/wɪtʃ/ Listen

noun

Witch n. A cone of paper which is placed in a vessel of lard or other fat, and used as a taper. (Prov. Eng.)

Witch n.

1.

One who practices the black art, or magic; one regarded as possessing supernatural or magical power by compact with an evil spirit, esp. with the Devil; a sorcerer or sorceress; now applied chiefly or only to women, but formerly used of men as well. "There was a man in that city whose name was Simon, a witch." "He can not abide the old woman of Brentford; he swears she's a witch."

2.

An ugly old woman; a hag.

3.

One who exercises more than common power of attraction; a charming or bewitching person; also, one given to mischief; said especially of a woman or child. (Colloq.)

4.

(Geom.) A certain curve of the third order, described by Maria Agnesi under the name versiera.

5.

(Zool.) The stormy petrel.

6.

A Wiccan; an adherent or practitioner of Wicca, a religion which in different forms may be paganistic and nature-oriented, or ditheistic. The term witch applies to both male and female adherents in this sense.

Witch balls, a name applied to the interwoven rolling masses of the stems of herbs, which are driven by the winds over the steppes of Tartary. Cf. Tumbleweed.

Witches' besoms (Bot.), tufted and distorted branches of the silver fir, caused by the attack of some fungus.

Witches' butter (Bot.), a name of several gelatinous cryptogamous plants, as Nostoc commune, and Exidia glandulosa. See Nostoc.

Witch grass (Bot.), a kind of grass (Panicum capillare) with minute spikelets on long, slender pedicels forming a light, open panicle.

Witch meal (Bot.), vegetable sulphur. See under Vegetable.

verb

witch v. t. (past & past part. witched; pres. part. witching) To bewitch; to fascinate; to enchant. "(I 'll) witch sweet ladies with my words and looks." "Whether within us or without The spell of this illusion be That witches us to hear and see."

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Etymology of 'Witch'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Witch" Quotes from Famous Books

... followed the years that are gone," he said; "The spirits the words of the witch fulfill; For I saw the ghost of my father dead, By the moon's dim light on the misty hill. He shook the plumes on his withered head, And the wind through his pale form whistled shrill. And a low, sad voice on the hill I heard, ...

— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... captain, "I should take it to mean that if you mark off thirty-seven long paces north from the Witch's Head and eighty-nine long paces east from The Three Sisters, the spot where those paths cross would be the place ...

— Doubloons--and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes

... creations, the "delicate Ariel." Not an allusion to its shape or figure is made throughout the play; yet we assign it a form on its very first entrance, as soon as Prospero speaks of its refusing to comply with the" abhorred commands" of the witch, Sycorax. And again, in the fifth act, when Ariel, after recounting the sufferings of the wretched usurper ...

— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... of that 17th century, crowded with so many important historical events, changes, and personages. Throughout Europe, and especially in what we call our Mother Country, men were unusually arous'd—(some would say demented.) It was a special age of the insanity of witch-trials and witch-hangings. In one year 60 were hung for witchcraft in one English county alone. It was peculiarly an age of military-religious conflict. Protestantism and Catholicism were wrestling like giants for the mastery, straining ...

— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... professions, or offices, with such energy that the enraged hearers proceeded to violence against those whom the preacher had denounced. A sermon which Bernardino once preached in Rome (1424) had another consequence besides a bonfire of vanities on the Capitol: 'After this,' we read, 'the witch Finicella was burnt, because by her diabolical arts she had killed many children and bewitched many other persons; and all Rome went to ...

— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

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