Definitions
Wiktionary
- n. Caribbean folklore A night witch who sucks people's blood, sheds her skin, and can turn herself into a ball of fire and fly.
Etymologies
- From West Indies Creole. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“According to reports, the public servant claimed that the elderly woman is a 'soucouyant' or witch and this is why she did not want to pass on her left side...”
“And that's when the normalcy of the everyday world spins into the mystery of the demonic past, and the thoroughly modern Fentons make the terrifying acquaintance of a soucouyant, an evil spirit disguised by day as a gruesome crone who strips off her skin at night and assumes the form of a fireball to penetrate random victims' homes in search of blood or a baby she can sacrifice.”
The Huffington Post: Elizabeth Abbott: The Skin Will Make You Jump Out of Yours!
“My parents used to put all the children in the village to sit down on benches and tell us about soucouyant and lagahoo.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘soucouyant’.
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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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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Vampires
A list of famous characters, vampire lore, and anything else having to do with the genre.
Dracula, vampire, vampire bat, vampire pumpkins ..., Nosferatu, nosferatu, Angel, Spike, Bill Compton, Count Orlok, Vlad the Impaler, Count von Count and 35 more...
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a bestiary
soucouyant, revenant, sylph, Merope, Pleiades, nymph, sibyl, calypso, eidolon, kif, Scylla
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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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Words that were new to me
but now they're not because I looked them up. In cases of polysemy or homography, *of course* it was the oddest meaning that stumped me. ;)
Procrustean bed, idem sonans, hob, backcap, quango, cheap-jack, pantechnicon, churrigueresco, chopfallen, maritorious, supererogation, catimini and 212 more...
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spicolli's Words
terrapin, ravenous, fuck, sepulchral, garlic, suss, queer, curmudgeon, foodie, intricate, omphalos, subversion and 534 more...
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The Collection
A somewhat discriminatory list of words and phrases collected for their euphonic or arcane appeal, interesting etymology, or concise definition of an otherwise unnamed phenomenon or concept.
ziggurat, neophilia, sucker punch, soporific, epoch, tundra, fiat, idiotproof, miscellany, metaphysics, cryptozoology, dysphoria and 850 more...
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The "dark" things
grave, dead, death, die, died, dies, murder, murdered, murderer, murders, murdering, murderous and 115 more...
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looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1406 more...
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5-0
Hecko, words! I’m so happy I’ve found you. I want to keep you all and never want to lose you again. I hope you like it here.
amscray, thistledown, tine, tinsel, pungent, snarl, wail, lanky, viscid, dawdle, luminous, stow and 2719 more...
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Verbalitis
syncretic
anecdotal, phthisis, serendipitous, slapper, syncretic, sesquipedalian, hysteresis, polt, noyade, crocket, irenic, masquerade and 278 more...
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Setting the Scene: Dark and Dreary
Words that lend to the dark and dreary atmosphere of gothic literature.
dark, dreary, shroud, shrouded, veiled, skeleton, skeletal, dead, death, murky, gloomy, lugubrious and 274 more...
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rememberers
prolix, ageusia, animadversion, anodyne, antic, arabesque, beadle, brachymetropia, colophon, desquamation, diaphoresis, diegesis and 3248 more...
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Blood Matters?
legerdemain, eidolon, soucouyant, grawlix, foin, thanatism, chichevache, uloid, vellicate, victimate, bildungsroman, lambent and 63 more...
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My Words
Words of mine
jeremiad, adoratrice, entropy, oriflamme, rixatrix, alembic, catoptric, chthonian, de rigueur, oosik, cinerary, lusus naturae and 61 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for soucouyant.
knitandpurl "As if the spectres with which he paid for his passage to England, the soucouyants with which he revenged his uncle and family, all those bloodthirsty ghosts of his narrative have come alive in this city."
The Thing about Thugs by Tabish Khair, p 191 Dec 23, 2012