Witcraft

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An archaic variant of witchcraft, meaning the practice of magic or sorcery performed by those thought to have supernatural powers
2. An old spelling of witchcraft, referring to the use of spells and enchantment by someone believed to be a sorcerer
3. A dated term for the magical arts, especially the casting of spells and charms attributed to practitioners of the occult

Etymology: Ralph Lever, an English clergyman and writer, coined this word in 1573 for the title of his book "The Arte of Reason, rightly termed, Witcraft," a treatise teaching a systematic way to argue and dispute. He needed a name for the skill of reasoning itself, and he built it from two plain English materials: "wit," the faculty of the mind for understanding and inventing ideas, and "craft," meaning skill or the know-how of a trade. The result is a word that sounds like it should be old folk magic, yet it was a deliberate, Renaissance-era piece of logic-making. Lever's choice shows how much English writers of his day were willing to reshape native vocabulary to name ideas that had previously been borrowed from Latin or Greek, such as "logic" or "dialectic."