Witches

How to spell witches

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce witches

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does witches mean?

1. nounMore than one person, traditionally a woman, believed to practise magic or cast spells.
2. verbCasts a spell on or bewitches someone or something (third-person singular present).

Witches in a sentence

• noun

  The children dressed as witches for the Halloween party.

• verb

  In the play, the sorceress witches the prince into a deep sleep.

• noun

  Old folk tales warned travellers about the witches who lived in the forest.

• verb

  According to the legend, she witches anyone who enters her cottage.

Where does witches come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word goes back to Old English wicce, the feminine form meaning 'female sorceress', alongside the masculine wicca 'male sorcerer or wizard'. These were tied to the verb wiccian, meaning 'to practise magic or cast spells', though the deeper roots are murky and possibly connected to ideas of bending, waking, or rousing spirits. The spelling shifted over the centuries from wicce to wicche and finally to the modern 'witch', and the plural simply adds -es because the word ends in the 'ch' sound. By the medieval period the term had narrowed mostly to women accused of harmful magic, which is the sense that fuelled the notorious witch trials. The same Old English root survives today in the revived term 'Wicca' for modern pagan practice, a deliberate nod to that ancient spelling.

How the word is built

• witch (sorceress; from Old English wicce)
• -es (plural/third-person ending)