Bodachs

Part of speech: noun, plural

Definitions

1. Supernatural beings or spirits believed to appear as ominous or frightening presences; entities perceived as harbingers of death or misfortune; folkloric creatures associated with eerie or ghostly phenomena
2. Apparitions or phantom-like figures said to foretell doom or tragedy; shadowy beings from traditional folklore considered as messengers of impending disaster; ghostly forms thought to signal death or ill fate
3. Entities described in legend as ghostly watchers or spirits assumed to usher in bad luck or mortality; spectral creatures linked to death omens in regional myth; phantomlike presences recognized as symbols of misfortune ahead

Etymology: "Bodachs" is the plural of "bodach," a Scottish Gaelic word that English speakers borrowed to name the spirits said to foretell death. In Scottish folklore, a bodach is a sinister figure, often pictured as an old man, that appears as a sign someone is about to die. The word came into English from Scottish Gaelic, where "bodach" originally meant an old man or a churl, so the spectral figure takes its name from an ordinary elderly man.

Synonyms: ghosts, spirits, phantoms, apparitions, wraiths