Also water witcher. a person skilled at water witching; dowser.
a witch believed to haunt lakes, ponds, etc.
An Americanism dating back to 1810–20
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Gyatso said 90 percent of the ink he uses is from a company called Eternal Ink and is made from organic pigments, distilled water, witch hazel and alcohol.
From Washington Times ● Apr. 8, 2017
After the valley’s most popular dowser died in recent years, Mondavi has become the go-to water witch in Napa Valley.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 3, 2014
When Susan Lynch played a selkie in Roan Inish, she was otherworldly, like some crazy, albeit gorgeous, water witch.
From Time ● Jun. 3, 2010
The Woodvilles were convinced that they were descended from a French water witch named Melusine who lived during the tag end of the Wars of the Roses.
From Time Magazine Archive
“He knows more about water than anybody around here. He’s a water witch and a well-digger too. He’ll tell you. He’s put down half the wells in this part of the valley.”
From "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck
"You look like a water-witch there in the reeds," he cried delightedly, checking his stroke.
From The Song of the Blood-Red Flower by Linnankoski, Johannes
Granam, give me but two crowns of red gold, and I'll give you twopence of white silver, if Robin the devil be not a water-witch.
From A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 9 by Various
"Don't you remember leading me down once to admire the lady on her stern?--like a water-witch just gilded in the rays of some sunrise she had come up to see, you said."
From Not Pretty, but Precious by De Forest, J. W. (John William)
I must indeed have been exhausted to chop logic with a water-witch.
From Henry Brocken His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance by De la Mare, Walter
A tin cup rattles in a bucket, and another shadowy figure steals off into the darkness, with an instinct as unerring as the skill of a water-witch with a willow wand.
From The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come by Fox, John
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
