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Witch   /wɪtʃ/   Listen
noun
Witch  n.  A cone of paper which is placed in a vessel of lard or other fat, and used as a taper. (Prov. Eng.)



Witch  n.  
1.
One who practices the black art, or magic; one regarded as possessing supernatural or magical power by compact with an evil spirit, esp. with the Devil; a sorcerer or sorceress; now applied chiefly or only to women, but formerly used of men as well. "There was a man in that city whose name was Simon, a witch." "He can not abide the old woman of Brentford; he swears she's a witch."
2.
An ugly old woman; a hag.
3.
One who exercises more than common power of attraction; a charming or bewitching person; also, one given to mischief; said especially of a woman or child. (Colloq.)
4.
(Geom.) A certain curve of the third order, described by Maria Agnesi under the name versiera.
5.
(Zool.) The stormy petrel.
6.
A Wiccan; an adherent or practitioner of Wicca, a religion which in different forms may be paganistic and nature-oriented, or ditheistic. The term witch applies to both male and female adherents in this sense.
Witch balls, a name applied to the interwoven rolling masses of the stems of herbs, which are driven by the winds over the steppes of Tartary. Cf. Tumbleweed.
Witches' besoms (Bot.), tufted and distorted branches of the silver fir, caused by the attack of some fungus.
Witches' butter (Bot.), a name of several gelatinous cryptogamous plants, as Nostoc commune, and Exidia glandulosa. See Nostoc.
Witch grass (Bot.), a kind of grass (Panicum capillare) with minute spikelets on long, slender pedicels forming a light, open panicle.
Witch meal (Bot.), vegetable sulphur. See under Vegetable.



verb
witch  v. t.  (past & past part. witched; pres. part. witching)  To bewitch; to fascinate; to enchant. "(I 'll) witch sweet ladies with my words and looks." "Whether within us or without The spell of this illusion be That witches us to hear and see."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Witch" Quotes from Famous Books



... For from every hut the Fans rushed out towards him, the men dressed in their filthiest rags, the women with their faces chalked and their heads shaved. They stopped, however, on seeing a white man, and Walker knew enough of their tongue to ascertain that they looked for the coming of the witch doctor. The chief, it appeared, had died a natural death, and, since the event is of sufficiently rare occurrence in the Fan country, it had promptly been attributed to witchcraft, and the witch ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... horses for the provender we gave them; and I daresay the coaches were not sorry to be cleaned and furbished up. Well, we went out and came in; going to see the sights, and returning. Amongst other things we saw was the burning mountain, and the tomb of a certain sorcerer called Virgilio, who made witch rhymes, by which he could raise the dead. Plenty of people came to see us, both English and Italians, and amongst the rest the priest. He did not come amongst the first, but allowed us to settle and become a little quiet before he ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... Incarnation. But, on the other hand, those refined thinkers who worship the Devil, whether in the swamps of Jamaica or the salons of Paris, always insist upon the shapelessness, the wordlessness, the unutterable character of the abomination. They call him "horror of emptiness," as did the black witch in Stevenson's Dynamiter; they worship him as the unspeakable name; as the unbearable silence. They think of him as the void in the heart of the whirlwind; the cloud on the brain of the maniac; the toppling turrets of vertigo ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... Leicester School (about two thirds) was purely her own; as it was (to the same quantity) in the Shakspeare Tales which bear my name. I wrote only the Witch Aunt, the first going to Church, and the final Story about a little ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... a maid, reputed Catholic heir to the English Crown, and used as pretext for an abortive rising against KING JAMES I. You can see that in practised hands (as here) and decorated with a pretty trimming of sentiment, abductions, witch-finding and other appropriate accessories, this furnishes a theme rich in romance. Perhaps I was a thought disappointed that more was not made of the actual conspiracy, and that, having started "too near the throne," the tale subsequently ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 12, 1919 • Various


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