Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Warlock |
WarlockNoun1. A male witch or demon. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "warlock" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1840. (references) |
| Domain | Definitions |
Literature | Warlock A wandering evil spirit; a wizard. (Anglo-Saxon, woer-loga, a deceiver, one who breaks his word. Satan is called in Scripture "the father of lies," the arch-warlock.). Source: Brewer's Dictionary. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Among most traditions of neo-pagans, a warlock is a punishment ceremony, not a person. In the ceremony a persons access to magickal power is "locked" and he or she has no ability to perform effective magickal spells, or have access to the energies at all. This is one of the most severe punishments that can be meted out among the neo-pagan community, and access to the ceremony itself is restricted to only the most advanced practitioners. To call someone a warlock is considered a major insult among neo-pagans.
The word itself comes from a Scottish word meaning "oathbreaker" or "liar"2. However, http://www.ladyoftheearth.com/witch/warlock.txt suggests that the word may come from the Old Norse Vard-lokkur, "caller of spirits".
1: Pavlac, Brian A. "10 Common Errors and Myths about the Witch Hunts, Corrected and Commented," Prof. Pavlac's Women's History Resource Site. (October 31, 2001). URL: http://www.kings.edu/womens_history/witch/werror.html (October 8, 2003).
2: Lexico LLC, "Dictionary.com/warlock," Dictionary.com URL: http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=warlock (January 13, 2001)
A possible origin
However, this may be a new meaning, as the frequent use of "warlock" to describe a male witch is largely based on Hollywood
scriptwriters, especially those writing for the 1960s sitcom, Bewitched1.Another possible origin
There is another version for the origin of the word warlock, coming from Old English 'wær-loga', the man of the logs, alluding to the small pieces of wood the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian priests and wise men used to divine by means of the runes. This seems to have been a slang word of Christian coinage pejoratively used on those who remained Pagan and practising the art of the runes. Later the word came to mean traitor to designate those warlocks who, after having been forced to accept Christianity, returned to their original faith and practice (for Christians, those who committed apostasy or betrayed the "true faith"); this occurred during a time in which many Pagan Anglo-Saxons were killed for refusing to accept Christianity and then the surviving Pagans celebrated the invasion of the Heathen Vikings, which allowed them to return to their original belief (the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a good resource for information about these happenings). The Anglo-Saxon warlock was not considered good or evil; he was believed to be able to heal, to cause disease, to cast or break spells, and to divine past, present and future, all this mainly by means of the runes. By extension, it became a synonym of sorcerer and wizard, and also of a typical mediaeval diabolical male witch (in this sense either able to fly in several ways, see Sabbath, witchcraft). The misuse of the word witch to name both witch and warlock is turning the word into an archaic one. Anyhow, this is not a mythical but a historical word.Warlocks in film
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Warlock."
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Sorcerer | Warlock, charmer, exorcist, mage; cunning man, medicine man; Shaman, figure flinger, ecstatica; medium, clairvoyant, fortune teller; mesmerist; deus ex machina; soothsayer. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Warlock |
| Specialty definitions using "warlock": Luggie. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | Gone as in she got sucked in to a big red ring by a warlock named what was it? (Charmed; writing credit: Colman deKay) I mean, well, you are a warlock magnet. (Charmed; writing credit: Colman deKay) Prue was right, which means I'm dating a warlock. (Charmed; writing credit: Colman deKay) | |
Movie/TV Titles | Warlock (1959) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Theater & Movies |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| "Warlock" is generally used as a noun (proper) -- approximately 67.44% of the time. "Warlock" is used about 43 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (proper) | 67.44% | 29 | 64,444 |
| Noun (singular) | 32.56% | 14 | 93,893 |
| Total | 100.00% | 43 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following table summarizes the usage of "warlock" based on a population census conducted in the United States. Ranks and frequencies are based on all names reported and classified. |
| Name | Usage/Gender | Usage per 100 million Persons | Rank in USA |
| Warlock | Last name | 130 | 66,609 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits. | |||
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day | Expression | Frequency per Day |
warlock | 343 | b.c rich warlock | 8 |
warlock boat | 50 | boat power warlock | 7 |
warlock guitar | 49 | bc rich warlock guitar | 7 |
billy warlock | 43 | warlock powerboats | 7 |
bc and rich and warlock | 36 | dick warlock | 7 |
dodge warlock | 31 | warlock pinchers | 7 |
tattoo warlock | 27 | doro warlock | 6 |
adam warlock | 25 | become warlock | 6 |
warlock witch | 22 | band warlock | 6 |
record warlock | 20 | ultimate warlock boat | 6 |
circle warlock | 15 | dobermans warlock | 6 |
mc warlock | 15 | ship space warlock | 6 |
spells warlock | 12 | lyrics warlock | 6 |
warlock movie | 12 | peter warlock | 5 |
doberman warlock | 11 | mufflers warlock | 5 |
warlock wizard | 11 | pic warlock | 5 |
warlock bass | 11 | magic warlock | 5 |
picture warlock | 10 | warlock windsor | 5 |
warlock motorcycle club | 9 | warlock bass guitar | 4 |
shadowbane warlock | 8 | art warlock | 4 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Language | Translations for "warlock"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Afrikaan | towenaar (enchanter, magician, sorcerer, wizard). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Albanian | Magjistar (conjurer, conjuror, enchanter, fascinator, mage, magician, magus, medicine man, sorcerer, thaumaturge, wizard). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Arabic | المشعوذ (charlatan, conjurer, magician, magus, mountebank, operator, prestidigitator, sorcerer, voodoo), الساحر (charmer, conjurer, enchanter, magician, sorcerer, voodoo, wizard), العراف (astrologer, augur, enchanter, seer, soothsayer, witchdoctor, wizard). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bulgarian | Магьосник. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Czech | Èarodìj. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dutch | tovenaar (enchanter, magician, sorcerer, wizard), duivelskunstenaar (enchanter, magician, sorcerer, wizard). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Esperanto | sorĉisto (enchanter, magician, sorcerer, wizard). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
French | sorcier (water diviner). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Frisian | tsjoender (enchanter, magician, sorcerer, wizard). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
German | Zauberer (captivator, conjurer, enchanter, magician, sorcerer, sorcerers, wizard, wizards). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Greek | Νεκρομάντησ. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hebrew | ־כשף. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hungarian | Varázsló (cole prophet, conjurer, conjuror, enchanter, magician, medicine man, powwow, pow-wow, sorcerer, wizard), Boszorkánymester. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Italian | Stregone (medicine man, sorcerer, witch doctor, wizard). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Kanji | ワープロ馬鹿 (business shirt, dead silence after a joke falls flat, food wagon service, multi-national enterprise, news program, shirt, someone whose kanji-writing ability has suffered due to overreliance on the kana->kanji conversion systems used to input Japanese text on a computer, table-side service, talk and varietyshow, vaccine, vagina, vaseline, wacoal, Wagner, wagon, wagon sale, Waikiki, washer, Washington, Washington Post, WASP, watt, wax, wide, wide-angle lens, wide-band, wife, wild, wild pitch, windshield wipers, windup, wine, wine color, wine glass, wine list, wine red, winecooler, winery, wipe, wipe in, wipe out, wire, wire glass, wired, wireless, wireless mike, wire-wrapping, wise, wivern, working holiday, workshop, World, world class, World Cup, world enterprise, World Games, World Series, worm, wow, wow and flutter, Wyoming, wyvern). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Katakana | ワーロック . (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Manx | fer obbee (conjurer, sorcerer, witch-doctor, wizard). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Papiamen | tovenar (enchanter, magician, sorcerer, wizard). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | arlockway Mágico (conjurer, fairy, illusionist, magenta, magic, magical, magician, mystical, sorcerer, witching), Feiticeiro (archimage, magician, medico, powwow, sorcerer, witchcraft, witchdoctor, wizard), Bruxo (magician, sorcerer, wizard). (various references) Колдун, Маг, 'олшебник. (various references) veštac (sorcerer), čarobnjak (enchanter, mage, magician, sorcerer, sprite, wizard). (various references) Brujo (magician, sorcerer). (various references) mchawi (enchanter, magician, sorcerer, wizard). (various references) Trollkarl (conjurer, conjuror, enchanter, fascinator, illusionist, magician, sorcerer, viz, wizard). (various references) Sihirbaz (charmer, conjurer, conjuror, illusionist, mage, magician, sorcerer, wise man, witch, wizard), síhírbaz (enchanter, magician, sorcerer, wizard), Falcı (augur, diviner, fortune teller, seer), Büyücü (charmer, enchanter, magician, necromancer, necromantic, sorcerer, wise man, witch, wizard). (various references) чарівник (charmer, enchanter, magician, necromancer, sorcerer, wizard), Маг, Фокусник, 'іщун. (various references) swynwr (enchanter, magician, sorcerer, wizard), dewin (augur, diviner, enchanter, mage, magician, sorcerer, wizard). (various references) waay (enchanter, magician, sorcerer, wizard). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Latin | 500 BCE-Modern | magus. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "warlock": warlocks. (additional references) | |
| |
"Warlock" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Arlick, Garriock, Mallock, Marnock, wallok, warloc, warlox, warnock, weblock, Wilecki. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-c-k-l-o-r-w" | |
-2 letters: carol, claro, cloak, coral, crawl, croak, wacko, wrack. | |
-3 letters: alow, arco, awol, calk, calo, cark, carl, claw, coal, cola, cork, cowl, craw, crow, kola, lack, lark, loca, lock, okra, oral, orca, rack, rock, wack, walk, wark, work. | |
-4 letters: arc, ark, awl, car, caw, col, cor, cow, koa, kor, lac, lar, law, low, oak. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-c-k-l-o-r-w" | |
+1 letter: lacework, warlocks. | |
+2 letters: crosswalk, laceworks, workplace. | |
+3 letters: crosswalks, workaholic, workplaces. | |
+4 letters: electroweak, lacquerwork, latticework, workaholics. | |
+5 letters: lacquerworks, latticeworks. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)57 61 72 6C 6F 63 6B |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references).--. .- .-. .-.. --- -.-. -.- |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01010111 01100001 01110010 01101100 01101111 01100011 01101011 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)W a r l o c k |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0057 0061 0072 006C 006F 0063 006B |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
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Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)57678478816977 |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Slideshow 6. Usage Frequency 7. Names: Frequency 8. Expressions: Internet | 9. Translations: Modern 10. Translations: Ancient 11. Derivations 12. Anagrams | 13. Orthography 14. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
