Vampire

How to spell vampire

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce vampire

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does vampire mean?

1. nounA mythical undead creature said to rise at night and drink the blood of the living.
2. nounA person who ruthlessly preys on or exploits others for personal gain.

Vampire in a sentence

• The film features a vampire who can only move about after sunset.

• Critics called the lender a financial vampire who drained struggling families.

• In the story, a wooden stake is the only weapon that can destroy a vampire.

• The columnist described the manager as an energy vampire who exhausted his entire team.

Where does vampire come from?

Language of origin: Other

Vampire entered English in the early 1700s, borrowed through French vampire and German Vampir from a Slavic source; compare Serbian and Russian vampir, both naming a corpse believed to rise from the grave at night to drink the blood of the living. The deeper origin is debated, but many scholars trace it to an Old Slavic word, and some connect it to a Turkic term meaning 'witch' or 'monster'. The folklore arrived in Western Europe alongside sensational reports of supposed vampire outbreaks in the Balkans, and the word spread rapidly once newspapers and writers seized on the idea. Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula then cemented the modern image and made the term a household word. For spelling, the trap is that it ends in a silent -e and uses an 'i', not the 'y' that some writers expect from the long 'eye' sound.

How the word is built

• vampir (Slavic root for the undead blood-drinker)
• -e (silent French/English final letter)