Voodoo

[voo-doo]

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

/ 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

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

• voodooistic adjective
• voodooist noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of voodoo¹

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”

Word History and Origins

Origin of voodoo¹

C19: from Louisiana French voudou, ultimately of West African origin; compare Ewe vodu guardian spirit

Example Sentences

Although Catholicism, Evangelical Christianity, and even Jehovah’s Witnesses are widely accepted in Latin households, Lucumí is too often reduced to “witchcraft” or “voodoo,” simply because it exists outside the bounds of whiteness — and, more importantly, in resistance to white supremacy.

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She falls hard for New Orleans, seeking traces of voodoo, “something more than just a souvenir doll or a little bag of gris-gris or a pink love potion, or a guide who will repeat his stories for twenty bucks,” she writes.

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“I have no way to get to the Louisiana swamps where, it’s said, you can still find voodoo priestesses living in trailers. I don’t have a car. And having no car in the United States is like not having a pulse.”

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While we wouldn’t rule out the possibility he has a huge collection of Labubus or Malibu Stacy dolls, he seems more like the type to use voodoo dolls.

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He pauses: “It was ancestral spirits, whatever you want to call it,” adding with a mischievous cackle, “But not voodoo!”

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Related Words

• witchcraft