Word of the Day

Friday, August 09, 2002

revenant

\REV-uh-nuhnt\ , noun;

One who returns after death (as a ghost) or after a long absence.

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Quotes:

Lazarus, as a revenant, is often used by the religious romance-writers of the middle ages as a vehicle for their conceptions of the lower world.

-- R. C. Trench, Notes on the Miracles of Our Lord

He pale, immobile like a revenant himself, looked sometimes out of the window, sometimes closed his eyes.

-- D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love

The folklore of the Irish countryside too, with its hauntings, revenants and changelings... was an integral part of everyday awareness, even in the middle-class world of Yeats's childhood.

-- Terence Brown, The Life of W. B. Yeats

Origin:

Revenant is from French revenir, "to return," which is also the source of the word revenue, "that which returns from an investment."