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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A person believed to have been transformed into a wolf or to be capable of assuming the form of a wolf.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. etc. See werwolf, etc.

Wiktionary

  1. n. A person who is transformed or can transform into a wolf or a wolflike human, often said to transform during a full moon.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. A person transformed into a wolf in form and appetite, either temporarily or permanently, whether by supernatural influences, by witchcraft, or voluntarily; a lycanthrope. Belief in werewolves, formerly general, is not now extinct.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. a monster able to change appearance from human to wolf and back again

Etymologies

  1. Middle English, from Old English werewulf : wer, man; see wī-ro- in Indo-European roots + wulf, wolf; see wolf.

Examples

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Comments

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  • Louises The hunger, in its vicious simplicity, teaches you how to be a werewolf. From "The Last Werewolf" by Glen Duncan.
    Apr 1, 2012

  • milosrdenstvi The etymology is pretty cool -- relation to Latin vir never occurred to me before. Jan 19, 2010

  • skipvia Some Bavarian peasants having caught a wolf one evening, tied it to a post by the tail and went to bed. The next morning nothing was there! Greatly perplexed, they consulted the local priest, who told them that their captive was undoubtedly a werewolf and had resumed its human form during the night. "The next time that you take a wolf," the good man said, "see that you chain it by the leg, and in the morning you will find a Lutheran."
    Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary Oct 14, 2007

‘werewolf’ has been looked up 1284 times, loved by 1 person, added to 20 lists, commented on 3 times, and has a Scrabble score of 17.