Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. One that returns after a lengthy absence.
- n. One who returns after death.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. One who returns; especially, one who returns after a long period of absence or after death; a ghost; a specter; specifically, in mod. spiritualism, an apparition; a materialization.
- n. In mathematics, a form which continually returns as leading coefficient of irreducible covariants.
Wiktionary
- n. Someone who returns from a long absence.
- n. A person or thing reborn.
- n. A supernatural being that returns from the dead; a zombie or ghost.
- adj. Used as an adjective.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. coming back
- adj. of or relating to or typical of a revenant
- n. someone who has returned from the dead
- n. a person who returns after a lengthy absence
Etymologies
- 19th century. From French revenant, the present participle of revenir ("to return"). Compare revenue. (Wiktionary)
- French, from present participle of revenir, to return, from Old French; see revenue. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“But spacers, being spacers, would prefer for their saviour to be a revenant from the past rather than a modern-day phenomenon.”
365 tomorrows » 2006 » August : A New Free Flash Fiction SciFi Story Every Day
“Loved the use of the word revenant, haven't seen it used so perfectly before.”
“If being a vampire was a world of cold punctuated by brief moments of warmth at feeding time, being a revenant was a world of ice with no relief.”
“Few aspects of modern life go untouched: labor laws are in effect to prevent slave labor abuse of the undead, for whom the official, politically correct term is a "revenant".”
“But in "Exit Ghost," Zuckerman feels like a "revenant" while walking the streets of present-day Manhattan, and he's not the only shade around.”
“One seems to see him, a languid-limbed "revenant," with heavy-lidded drowsy eyes and voluptuous lips, emerging all swathed and wrapped in costly cerements out of the tomb of some Babylonian king.”
“It may not be too great a flight of imagination to conceive our noble 'revenant' not forgetful of the great troubles of his own day, and anxious to know how often London had been burned down since his time, and how often the plague had carried off its thousands.”
“Since the downfall of the Empire he has lived a sort of Bohemian existence in Paris, where his striking resemblance to Louis Napoleon has won for him the nickname of "the ghost" (le revenant).”
“During his Congressional career, the government was little more than an attaché of the French legation, and the opposition to which he belonged a helpless revenant from the dead and buried Colonial past.”
“revenant' not forgetful of the great troubles of his own day, and anxious to know how often London had been burned down since his time, and how often the plague had carried off its thousands.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘revenant’.
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nouns
enfleurage, fautor, mafia, haslet, chopine, sea-gate, cantillation, formicary, go-devil, Gongorism, mamzer, mazarine and 147 more...
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Gene Wolfe
Please contribute your favorite words from any of Gene Wolfe’s books to this prize-winning list.
In case you come across words in this list which are too commonplace to fit in, please ...gallipot, roost, badelaire, oblesque, execration, dhole, amschaspand, arctother, chalcedony, penitence, asimi, autarch and 839 more...
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Words
phantasmagoria, eviscerate, avast, simulacrum, varicose, oblique, gestalt, ersatz, vernal, vivace, stellate, synecdoche and 321 more...
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wallace
Remington, Windsor, prorector, wen, aver, mottle, seltzer, tepee, lapidary, effete, sotto, presbyopia and 351 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Sufjan Stevens invites you to Come On...
All things Sufjan.
Sufjan Stevens, Illinois, Michigan, Christmas, what would Frank ..., seven swans, revenant, Casimir Pulaski Day, Asthmatic Kitty, Enjoy Your Rabbit, Carl Sandburg, Superman and 50 more...
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Slam Fodder
Those words that will inevitable end up in a Slam Poem
feel free to challenge me!:)bumptious, gamekeeper, slamily, burbuliatorius, cryptomnesia, paradox, pulchritudinous, mimetic, anhedonia, skelf, rampike, furlough and 84 more...
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a bestiary
soucouyant, revenant, sylph, Merope, Pleiades, nymph, sibyl, calypso, eidolon, kif, Scylla
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doubtlessly reduntant
pedentive, pendentive, fantod, nonpareil, apposite, anfractuous, amanuensis, sherbet, erumpent, verdigris, styptic, tektitic and 24 more...
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Witchcraft, monsters, and the macabre
lamia, onomancy, divination, hagiolatry, jackalope, lycanthrope, thaumaturge, tzigane, chthonic, thaumaturgic, revenant, soucouyant and 4 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1824 more...
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theyearofglad's list
Awesome words.
palimpsest, portmanteau, prolix, sycophant, eschew, revenant, haecceity, velleity, equipoise, caesura, soteriology, inchoate and 23 more...
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Verecund, flivver, etc
Just some words I happen to enjoy. Some thread-worn, some not.
yegg, yob, verecund, amatory, fermata, threepenny, gruntled, flivver, gamboge, decolletage, ordure, nudnik and 173 more...
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difficult words
ordure, tatterwallop, callipygian, odious, colophon, cynosure, hardener, emollience, valetudinarian, demonym, volage, polysemantic and 256 more...
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Magoosh GRE
its a list of words borrowed from Magoosh GRE blog ,an indispensable resource for GRE test takers.
inimitable, exiguity, myriad, cornucopia, surfeit, glut, deluge, opaque, pellucid, grandiloquent, turgid, gadfly and 106 more...
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euphonic logorrhea
cephalopodous, plumulaceous, oblomovism, etiolation, pavonine, somnolent, logorrhea, fulguration, gossamer, prestidigitation, daffodil, inchoate and 174 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for revenant.

ruzuzu Thank you, Prolagus! That's exactly what I was thinking.
*wanders over to Casimir Pulaski Day* Jun 11, 2010
Prolagus
(Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, IL, by Sufjan Stevens) Jun 11, 2010
Jubjub Dawn-sniffing revenant,
Plodder through midnight rain,
Question me again.
from "Casualty" by Seamus Heaney Jun 11, 2010
reesetee Yup. I fixed it. Feb 24, 2009
bilby Question mark in tag is borky bork bork, yanno. Feb 24, 2009
reesetee Good idea. I've been tagging words as "weirdnet" but that's not specific enough. Feb 24, 2009
chained_bear Yeah, someone should tag those. It would be great to have a list of all the words WeirdNet defines as "a human being." Feb 24, 2009
reesetee Oh, look! WeirdNet added its all-time favorite definition here: "(n): a human being." Feb 24, 2009
bilby With their revenant banks now underwritten by the government, the executives took a luxury holiday in Prodigal. Feb 24, 2009
hildjj Also: "someone who returns from a long absence". How would you contrast this with "prodigal"? Feb 24, 2009
whichbe A visible ghost or animated corpse that was believed to return from the grave to terrorize the living. (Wikipedia) May 21, 2008
uselessness A sadly underrated word. I love this word. May 3, 2007