Voodoo

American  

[voo-doo] / ˈvu du /

noun

plural

Voodoos

1. Sometimes Vodoun a fusion of Afro-Caribbean Vodou and folk magic practiced chiefly in Louisiana, deriving ultimately from West African Vodun and containing elements borrowed from the Roman Catholic religion.

2. a person who practices this religion.

3. a fetish or other object of Voodoo worship.

4. a group of magical and ecstatic rites associated with Voodoo.

5. Sometimes Offensive. voodoo. (loosely) black magic; sorcery.

---

adjective

1. of, pertaining to, associated with, or practicing Voodoo.

2. Informal: Sometimes Offensive. voodoo. characterized by deceptively simple, almost as if magical, solutions or ideas.

   voodoo economics.

verb (used with object)

Voodooed, Voodooing

1. to affect by Voodoo magic.

voodoo British  

/ ˈvuːduː /

noun

1. Also called: voodooism.  a religious cult involving witchcraft and communication by trance with ancestors and animistic deities, common in Haiti and other Caribbean islands

2. a person who practises voodoo

3. a charm, spell, or fetish involved in voodoo worship and ritual

---

adjective

1. relating to or associated with voodoo

verb

1. (tr) to affect by or as if by the power of voodoo

voodoo Cultural  

1. A form of animism (see also animism) involving trances and other rituals. Communication with the dead is a principal feature of voodoo. It is most common in the nations of the Caribbean Sea, especially Haiti, where people sometimes mingle voodoo and Christian practices.

---

Sensitive Note

The history of slavery in the Caribbean brought religious practices from enslaved West Africans into contact with the Roman Catholicism in French and Spanish colonies, and resulted in distinct New World religions like Haitian Vodou and Louisiana Voodoo. For some time, the most common name in English for these related religious traditions was Voodoo. Today the capitalized proper noun Voodoo is used only for the religion as practiced in Louisiana. The spelling Voodoo is considered offensive in naming religious practice outside of Louisiana, as in Haiti and Cuba, where the proper names are Vodou and Vodú, respectively. However, as the widely recognized term, Voodoo was also the one appropriated by popular culture to describe a number of practices poorly understood or purposefully exoticized by those outside of the religious community. Spiritual practices involving charmed objects loosely inspired the so-called “voodoo doll,” though no such practice of stabbing an effigy with pins is attested in the practice of Voodoo or Hoodoo. In Vodou, the “zombie” is a living but soulless individual whose free will has been taken by a powerful sorcerer or bocor, not the risen dead monster depicted in films, books, and video games. Ultimately, use of the word voodoo is complicated by widespread familiarity with the appropriated, secular, pop culture mythology of the entertainment industry—a mythology that poorly represents or directly conflicts with the authentic religious and historical core of Voodoo and related spiritual traditions such as Vodun, Vodou, and Hoodoo.

Other Word Forms

• voodooist noun
• voodooistic adjective

Etymology

Origin of Voodoo

An Americanism dating back to 1810–20; from Louisiana French, earlier vandoux, vandoo, from a West African source perhaps akin to Fon vodũ “spirit,” or Ewe vodu “tutelary deity, demon”

Example Sentences

The Bank of Japan, simultaneously, is scaling back bond purchases, ending a two-decade experiment in financial voodoo.

From MarketWatch

The ghost tours in New Orleans are borderline legendary, with popular offerings focusing on the supernatural, New Orleans’ “Casket Girls,” and on the origins of Marie Laveau’s rise to notoriety as a voodoo priestess.

From MarketWatch

Raphael Saadiq, his co-producer on “Voodoo,” had been working with him on a fourth album.

From Salon

Five years would pass before its follow-up, “Voodoo,” catapulted him to a level of fame that made him retreat from the public until 2014, when he returned with the more politically infused funk-fest of “Black Messiah.”

From Salon

There’s an apocryphal story of a critic likening a Jimi Hendrix performance to “listening to heavy metal falling from the sky”; the guitar riffs throughout “Voodoo” pay homage to that rock god by refining the platinum left at that crash site and floating it back to heaven.

From Salon

Related Words

• witchcraft