Voodoo

How to spell voodoo

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce voodoo

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does voodoo mean?

1. nounA religion and set of folk-magic practices with West African and Caribbean roots, often associated in popular culture with charms and spells.
2. nounSomething dismissed as superstition, trickery, or reasoning that has no real basis.

Voodoo in a sentence

• The museum exhibit traced the history of voodoo from West Africa to New Orleans.

• Critics called the budget plan pure voodoo with no real figures behind it.

• The novel features a small doll central to a voodoo ritual.

• He treats the office printer like voodoo, convinced it only works if you tap it twice.

Where does voodoo come from?

Language of origin: Other

Voodoo entered English through Louisiana French and the Haitian Creole word vodou, which in turn comes from vodun in the Fon and Ewe languages of West Africa (in what is now Benin and Togo), where it literally meant a spirit, deity, or sacred object. The word travelled across the Atlantic with enslaved West Africans, whose religious traditions blended with Catholic practice to form the living faiths now spelled Vodou in Haiti and Voodoo in the American South. English-speaking writers picked it up in the nineteenth century, and the doubled vowels in 'voodoo' reflect an attempt to capture the long 'oo' sounds of the spoken word. In casual modern English it has drifted to a dismissive sense, meaning something seen as superstitious or based on nonsense, as in 'voodoo economics'. That loose figurative use is now far more common in everyday writing than any reference to the actual religion. The chief spelling trap is simply remembering that both halves use a double o.

How the word is built

• voodoo (a single borrowed root from Fon/Ewe vodun: spirit, deity); not built from English prefixes or suffixes