banshee

noun

(in Irish folklore) a spirit in the form of a wailing woman who appears to or is heard by members of a family as a sign that one of them is about to die.

Also, ban·shie.

Origin:
1765–75; < Irish bean sīdhe woman of a fairy mound; see sídh

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World English Dictionary

banshee (ˈbænʃiː, bænˈʃiː)

—n
	(in Irish folklore) a female spirit whose wailing warns of impending death

[C18: from Irish Gaelic bean sídhe, literally: woman of the fairy mound]

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
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00:10

Banshee is always a great word to know.

So is interrobang. Does it mean:

a children's mummer's parade, as on the Fourth of July, with prizes for the best costumes.

a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.

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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

banshee

1771, from phonetic spelling of Ir. bean sidhe "female of the Elves," from bean "woman" (from PIE span class="foreign">*gwen-; see queen) + sidhe, from sith "fairy" or sid "fairy mound." Specifically, one who calls to the spirits of the dead.

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
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Encyclopedia Britannica

Encyclopedia

banshee

("woman of the fairies") supernatural being in Irish and other Celtic folklore whose mournful "keening," or wailing screaming or lamentation, at night was believed to foretell the death of a member of the family of the person who heard the spirit. In Ireland banshees were believed to warn only families of pure Irish descent. The Welsh counterpart, the gwrach y Rhibyn ("witch of Rhibyn"), visited only families of old Welsh stock

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
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Example sentences

We learn to recognize the bark of the toucan, the distant roar of a howler monkey, and the banshee cry of a hoatzin.

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Related Words

sᴆdh

Matching Quote

"And what was the theory at the bottom of all these astounding proceedings? So far as it can be reduced to comprehensible terms it was much less a theory than a fear—a shivering, idiotic, discreditable fear of a mere banshee—an overpowering, paralyzing dread that some extra-eloquent Red, permitted to emit his balderdash unwhipped, might eventually convert a couple of courageous men, and that the courageous men, filled with indignation against the plutocracy, might take to the highroad, burn down a nail-factory or two, and slit the throat of some virtuous profiteer. In order to lay his fear, in order to ease the jangled nerves of the American successors to the Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns, all the constitutional guarantees of the citizen were suspended, the statute-books were burdened with laws that surpass anything heard of in the Austria of Maria Theresa, the country was handed over to a frenzied mob of detectives, informers and agents provocateursand the Reds departed laughing loudly, and were hailed by the Bolsheviki as innocents escaped from an asylum for the criminally insane."

-H.L. Mencken

banshee

ban·shee