banshee

Pronunciation

• IPA: /bænˈʃiː/, /ˈbænʃiː/^[1]

Etymology

borrowed from Irish bean sídhe (“woman of the fairies”),^[2][3][4][5] from Old Irish ben síde, literally “woman of the fairy mound”.^[1] The first element, bean “woman”, comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *gʷen- “woman”;^[2][5] sídhe means “fairy”, from síd “fairy mound”.^[2][5] Scottish Gaelic has the parallel bean sìth.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

A supernatural being of Irish and Scottish Highland belief, said to wail under the windows of a house where someone was about to die, first recorded in 1771.^[6][5][3]

Semantic evolution

Wiktionary notes that a banshee was originally just a fairy woman who sang a lament, or keen, for the dead of certain families; the sharp division between the banshee and other fairy folk comes from English translations of Irish stories rather than from the originals.^[1] The word is also applied to a noisy, ill-tempered woman.^[1]

Timeline

• 1771 – first recorded in English.^[6][5][3][1]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. In Gaelic folklore, a female spirit whose appearance or wailing warns a family that one of them will soon die.
2. A loud or bad-tempered woman.

Related words

• queen

References

1. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. [1] [2] [3] The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
3. [1] [2] [3] [4] Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. [1] Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1999), 2nd ed., New York: Random House
5. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Harper, Douglas, Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. [1] [2] Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press