Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A female spirit in Gaelic folklore believed to presage, by wailing, a death in a family.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A type of female fairy believed in Ireland and some parts of Scotland to attach herself to a particular house, and to foretell by each appearance the death of one of the family. Also benshie, benshi.
Wiktionary
- n. In Irish folklore, a female spirit, usually taking the form of woman whose mournful wailing warns of an impending death. Originally a fairy woman singing a caoineadh (lament) for recently-deceased members of the O’Grady, the O’Neill, the O’Brien, the O’Connor, and the Kavanagh families, translations into English made a distinction between the banshee and other fairy folk that the original language and original stories do not seem to have, and thus the current image of the banshee.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Celtic Folklore) A supernatural being supposed to warn a family of the approaching death of one of its members, by wailing or singing in a mournful voice, as under the windows of the house.
WordNet 3.0
- n. (Irish folklore) a female spirit who wails to warn of impending death
Etymologies
- Irish Gaelic bean sídhe, woman of the fairies, banshee : bean, woman (from Old Irish ben; see gwen- in Indo-European roots) + sídhe, fairy (from Old Irish síde, genitive of síd, fairy mound; see sed- in Indo-European roots). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“If synethesia can't make the cut than my autobiographical ramblings about my life as a mutant banshee from the river styx just won't cut it.”
“The thing that was odd about this scene is that the boyfriend with the shopping cart was gone from view by this time, and when I use the word banshee I'm not indulging in hyperbole.”
“one wail of a banshee" is going to be in my head all day long.”
“The cry of a banshee was a terrifying power and Sylvanas was the deadliest, most unique, of banshees.”
“Mailer's verbal reaction is oddly artificial (although the ear chewing is very real and painful to watch) and his wife seems to be lurking just off camera, and then she suddenly starts screaming like a banshee, which is what sets the kids off.”
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“Maybe if you didn't scream and yell like an entitled banshee she wouldn't mirror said banshee behavior.”
“I'm sure any remaining neighbors from that particular block still recall the banshee-like, blood-curdling scream that came from my house as soon as I busted that papier-mâché-and-cardboard zebra's ass.”
“Although the majority of the levels take on the form of a platformer, I saw one level in which you fly a large creature called a banshee whilst shooting down enemies - very reminiscent of SEGA's Panzer Dragoon.”
“When actress Zoe Saldana, who plays a Na'vi princess named Neytiri, filmed a scene in which she jumps on the back of flying jungle creature called a banshee, another director might have had her simply leap aboard a pommel horse or a polo-player's practice pony.”
“106 ‘An omen that sometimes accompanies the banshee is the coach-a- bower (cóiste-bodhar)—an immense black coach, mounted by a coffin, and drawn by headless horses driven by a Dullahan’ a headless phantom (WBY note to FFT 1888; P&I 16).”
Simon & Schuster: Collected Works of W. B. Yeats Volume III Autobiographies
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘banshee’.
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supernatural creatures according to M...
Turned this up on etymonline.com (link). It's amazing.
Hobbit (n.)
1937, coined in the fantasy tales of J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973).
On a blank leaf I scrawled: 'In a hole...niss, nisses, thrummy-cap, fairy, whitewoman, nicknevin, sibyl, fates, sprite, gnome, cuttie, scrat and 186 more...
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Mythical Beings
mermaid, manticore, fairy, brownie, dwarf, elf, leprechaun, selkie, gremlin, puck, pixie, genie and 97 more...
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ghost
This is Ghost List 2 ( the kind that go 'boo!' ) :P
( open list )
more:
http://www.wordnik.com/lists/macabrephantom, spectral, specter, spectre, spooky, poltergeist, haunt, spirit, banshee, cryptic, shadow, phantasm and 311 more...
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life, death, rebirth
vale of tears, aborning, transmigration, reincarnate, nativity, nascence, metempsychosis, palingenesis, againrising, psychopannychism, thnetopsychism, shuffle off this ... and 104 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2053 more...
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Gesundheit
Words that sound like sneezes
zucchini, zoology, wysiwyg, woodchuck, withhold, wichita, vacuum, twelfth, syzygy, synchronous, swatch, supersede and 120 more...
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She She She
Words containing "she" but excluding words beginning with "she"
usher, ashen, eggshell, freshen, bolshevik, woodshed, abashed, whirling dervishes, usherettes, diminishes, quashed, unsheathed and 51 more...
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Mythological Beastiary
abada, therianthropy, ba, bahamut, balaur, banshee, behemoth, bendigeidfran, bluecap, centaur, bugbear, Ceryneian Hind and 14 more...
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capitalcreative's Words
deviltry, visceral, cassanova, assuage, genesis, hot minute, osmosis, wistful, sublime, loathe, farfetched, newfangled and 283 more...
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Wordplayer's Wonderful Words
chaparral, grotesque, knork, newsmonger, thitherwards, fackeltanz, kakistocracy, sforzando, compendium, frump, inquere, phosphene and 100 more...
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ecbrenner's list
flatline, luddism, apocalipstick, muttsucker, leviathan of fore..., flint, coryphaeus, donnybrook, bandwidth, bagpipe the mizen, cheesed off, asterism and 525 more...
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Twitter favourites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favourite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
thunderfuck, incredible, merp, sara, flopparoo, smother, fugly, buer, plum, canny, nefelibata, cuntbucket and 1972 more... -
The Devil and His Imps
Names of 'the Devil himself, the devils his "flaming ministers", household goblins, rural demons, bogles, sprites, and fairies of all kinds' mentioned in Charles P.G. Scott's 'The Devil and His Imp...
devil, devilet, deviling, dablet, black angel, black man, black bear, black bull, black dog, bogle, bogie, boggard and 128 more...
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Words I like
There's nothing more to this list, really.
lily, defenestrate, gloaming, aesthetically, melody, translucent, semiotics, wistful, linear, origami, plethora, schadenfreude and 92 more...
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NTDW1
template, modal, sublingual, tandem, polycentric, septuagenarian, token, irrevocable, denotive, augural, aberrant, phlebotomy and 1188 more...
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Moi and toi
vagrant, beachcomber, banshee, poltergeist, nomadic, roguish, mirthful, impish, urchin, ragamuffin
Tweets
Looking for tweets for banshee.
john “The McDonnell F2H Banshee was a military carrier-based jet fighter aircraft, used by the United States Navy from 1948 to 1959 and by the Royal Canadian Navy from 1955 until 1962.�? More on Wikipedia. Dec 30, 2008
sionnach from "bean sidhe" or "ban sidhe", a fairy woman. Feb 19, 2007
seanahan I remember these from "Darby O'Gill and the Little People", a classic movie. Feb 6, 2007
chained_bear A.K.A. "ban sidh" > Gaelic. A supernatural being supposed by the peasantry of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands to wail under the windows of a house where one of the inmates is about to die.
Usage: "You remember that foul evening when you heard the banshees howl..." --"The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn," c. 1985 Shane Macgowan Feb 6, 2007