Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. One of a band of ancient Norse warriors legendary for their savagery and reckless frenzy in battle.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A wild warrior or champion of heathen times in Scandinavia. In battle the berserkers are said to have been subject to fits of fury, when they howled like wild beasts, foamed at the mouth, gnawed the rim of their shields, etc.; and on such occasions they were popularly believed to be proof against fire and steel.
- n. Hence A person of extreme violence and fury.
Wiktionary
- n. One of a class of legendary Norse warriors who fought frenzied and shirtless regardless of wounds (possibly due to ingestion of psychotropic and hallucinatory drugs such as Fly Agaric Mushrooms).
- n. One who fights as if frenzied, like a Berserker.
WordNet 3.0
- n. one of the ancient Norse warriors legendary for working themselves into a frenzy before a battle and fighting with reckless savagery and insane fury
Etymologies
- Old Norse berserkr : *bera, feminine of björn, bear; see bher-2 in Indo-European roots + serkr, shirt. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Battleprep is often referred to as a berserker state, but that is only partially correct.”
““A berserker is a mortal born with uncommon speed and strength,” she said.”
“He could feel what the Nordic tribes called the berserker rage gaining control of him and he fought it off, not wanting to lose that control.”
“Hugh Jackman reprises the role that made him a superstar, as the fierce fighting machine who possesses amazing healing powers, adamantium claws, and a primal fury known as berserker rage.”
“The irony of Claudius as an urbane "berserker" may be picked up by the reader or teacher, but it ought to be handled very carefully before being dropped again.”
“The berserker is a killing machine host for the tribe’s god.”
“We use a variety of futuristic guns to take aim at every Na'vi, alien anima and hostile plant we see while levelling up familiar video-game abilities, such as berserker rage and health regeneration.”
“Punisher (they had Nick Fury in the last game, so why not ... give him a berserker bullet barrage as a Special Move ..)”
“It may be hard to portray a fighter whose style is clearly berserker as the good-guy, but that certainly tells us a lot about his personality; he fights for the purpose of fighting.”
Superhero Nation: how to write superhero novels and comic books » The Last Man on Mars’ Review Forum
“The central tragedy of this book is the arrival of the Red Army in late 1944, raping, butchering and smashing its way through a civilization more than half a millennium old in a bloodbath that was both berserker vengeance and cold ethnic cleansing.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘berserker’.
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Violence
sucker punch, punch, bunch of fives, haymaker, bare-knuckle, punch-drunk, brawler, scrapper, hellkite, street fighter, gamecock, powerhouse and 30 more...
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wanderstar's Words
superlative, mulish, mumps, catatonic, aquiline, clandestine, phantasmagoria, chryselephantine, microfiche, mutineer, reprobate, ruthless and 312 more...
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bintalshamsa's list
My Favorite Words
weltschmerz, perspicacity, idée fixe, invigilator, salubrious, tchotchke, ex nihilo, invidious, malapropism, naïve, sardonic, elide and 1401 more...
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Transhumanity
Cribbed from Transhumanist Terminology at aleph.se, which has definitions, and is itself based on the Lextropicon.
adhocracy, aeonomics, a-life, agoric system, ai, ai-complete, aleph, algernon, amortalist, arachniography, arch-anarchy, arcology and 333 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, B
bloviate, bejesus, brouhaha, behoove, bodacious, bamboozle, banshee, bub, bolus, blob, bubbly, bleb and 414 more...
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Monovocalics
Words that have only one of the vowels. On this list I include only words with at least three vowels. When I first started the list, if a word had several forms, I generally listed only the one wit...
syzygy, mirific, cumulus, homolog, monocot, bedewed, jezebel, referee, bikini, minikin, locomotor, terebenthene and 2359 more...
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Words Covered in Faery Dust (B)
words that evoke magic, mystery, mayhem, magnificence or anything else that glimmers in the grass
balcony, bailey, baguette, bairn, balalaika, baldric, balefire, baby's breath, ballet, balm of gilead, balsam, baluster and 188 more...
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Words that kick serious ass
juggernaut, haymaker, gung-ho, frag, smite, blunderbuss, gargantuan, ragnarok, ripsnorter, herculean, silverback, firebrand and 127 more...
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Scenariot
Rebellious destruction, police and protestors, or just angry mobs.
bedlam, chaos, havoc, destruction, cataclysm, devastation, mayhem, plunder, ravage, wreckage, destroy, blitzkrieg and 112 more...
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die6die's Words
somnambulist, obfuscate, hirsute, kleptobibliomania, serendipitous, dissuade, duplicitous, zounds, lo, unleash, fortnight, thaumaturgy and 278 more...
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B is for Blue Canary
My B Words
bugbear, bette davis eyes, backstroke, barney, babushka, babycakes, backscratcher, bad news bears, balderdash, ballyhoo, baloney, bamboozle and 150 more...
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Cool Words
Words that are awesome to use, if you can find a good place in a sentence to use them!
asunder, zero, scarecrow, chronic, crooked, aftermath, aquatic, karma, deadpan, devil, berserker, bibliotaph and 32 more...
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Mellifluous Words
farouche, charivari, rhadamanthine, amaranthine, mellifluous, serviette, luncheonette, vagrant, sorbet, nadir, vanguard, paladin and 76 more...
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spoon's Words
tuffet, spoon, eigenvalue, eigenvector, eigenspace, stoked, orgy, nonagon, humanitarian, life, cheesesteak, nice and 78 more...
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introduction to death
words that cause death,or defines death.
detonate, explosive, ammunition, rocket, shrapnel, grenade, nitroglycerin, propellant, fireworks, fuel, combustible, electricity and 62 more...
Tweets
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