psychopomp

American  

[sahy-koh-pomp] / ˈsaɪ koʊˌpɒmp /

noun

1. a person who conducts spirits or souls to the other world, as Hermes or Charon.

---

Etymology

Origin of psychopomp

First recorded in 1860–65, psychopomp is from the Greek word psȳchopompós conductor of souls. See psycho-, pomp

Example Sentences

That’s when he is greeted, in a kind of nightclub limbo, by Chimney Man — so called because this forbidding psychopomp, played by the fascinatingly strict Billy Porter, sweeps souls to their destination.

From New York Times • Feb. 22, 2024

Well, really two, if you count the supernatural one: a psychopomp, or collector of souls of the recently dead.

From New York Times • Dec. 4, 2023

In my early 20s, while trapped on a family vacation, I read The Dark Half, which taught me a word I have never forgotten: psychopomp.

From Time • Nov. 2, 2011

Now if the praying-machine be admittedly the last shift of senile religion, the value-finding machine may fairly be taken for the psychopomp of art.

From Art by Bell, Clive

The winds were now the maruts, or spirits of the breeze, serving Indra, the sky-god; again they were the great psychopomp himself.

From British Goblins Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions by Sikes, Wirt