vampire

Pronunciation

• IPA: /vɑ̃.piʁ/^[1]

Forms

vampire m (plural vampires)^[1] Also oupire (1751) and upire (1771).^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from German Vampir (recorded from 1732), itself from Serbo-Croatian vampir.^{[4][2][3][1][5]} The forms “oupire” and “upire” come from Czech upír or Russian упырь (upyrʹ).^[2][3] Rey says that all these words could go back to a Turkic “uber” “witch”.^[2] Bloch and Wartburg call the history of the word and its ideas complex, the word being found in many Tatar and Finnic languages.^[3]

English “vampire” (about 1734) may have been taken from French, in which case the French word is a little older than its first record.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The marquis d'Argens's Lettres juives (1738) uses it for an imaginary being who leaves the grave at night to suck the blood of the living.^[4][2]

Semantic evolution

The vampires of Central and Eastern Europe were much discussed in the 18th century.^[3][4] Figuratively, from 1756 (Mirabeau), a vampire is a person who grows rich by ruining others, a sense Voltaire used in 1770 and now dated.^[4][3][6] From 1835 (Gautier) it was also a criminal who commits murders or desecrates graves, as in le vampire de Düsseldorf.^[4][2]

Buffon applied the name to a blood-sucking bat of tropical America (1761–1763).^[4][3][6] About 1915 vampire was used for a femme fatale, before the English clipping vamp.^[2] The derivative vampirisme is as old as the noun (1738), and in psychiatry (1891) names a sexual perversion.^[2]

Timeline

• 1732 – German Vampir is recorded.^[4]
• 1738 – Vampire and vampirisme (d'Argens).^[4][2]
• 1746 – Dom Calmet's treatise on vampires.^[7][8]
• 1751 – The form oupire.^[2]
• 1756 – Figurative “a person who grows rich at others' expense” (Mirabeau).^[4][2]
• 1762 – First recorded by the Académie.^[4]
• 1761–1763 – A blood-sucking bat (Buffon).^[4][6]
• 1835 – A murderer or grave robber (Gautier).^[4][2]
• c. 1915 – A femme fatale.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A vampire, a dead person said to leave the grave at night to suck the blood of the living.^[6][9]
2. (dated, figurative) A person who grows rich at others' expense; a bloodsucker.^[6][9]
3. (literary) A murderer who commits many crimes or desecrates graves.^[6][9]
4. A vampire bat of South and Central America.^[6][9]

Word family

• vampirisme

Related words

• English vampire

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
3. ^ a b c d e f g Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
5. ^ Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 20, 51b
6. ^ a b c d e f g Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
7. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
8. ^ Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse
9. ^ a b c d Dictionnaire de français Larousse, larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais (accessed 2024)