Real meanings for unreal beings

What does “wendigo” really mean? 12 mythical creatures’ names explained

Monsters, ghosts, and strange beasts have haunted stories for a very long time, but their names can be just as mysterious as the creatures themselves. Some are surprisingly literal, while others have traveled across languages, religions, and continents before reaching English. From a "knocking spirit" to a goblin hiding in the periodic table, here’s what the names of 12 famous mythical creatures really mean.

The word zombie has traveled almost as dramatically as the creature itself. English acquired it through Caribbean forms such as Haitian Creole zonbi, with deeper roots in African languages. Merriam-Webster compares it with Kimbundu nzúmbe, meaning "ghost."

The traditional Haitian concept also differs significantly from Hollywood's hordes of contagious undead. Zombies became associated with people supernaturally deprived of autonomy and restored to a form of life. The modern flesh-eating version is largely a product of later popular culture, which transformed both the creature and the image English speakers associate with its name.

The word wendigo comes from a family of related Algonquian words, including Ojibwe wiindigoo and Cree wīhtikōw. The Ojibwe People’s Dictionary describes wiindigoo as a winter cannibal monster associated with terrifying, insatiable hunger.

But its literal origin is surprisingly uncertain. The mysterious-sounding word fuels the image of a night monster from past times.

A banshee's famous cry sounds frightening enough, but her Irish name is much less sinister. Banshee comes from bean sí: bean means "woman," while sí refers to the supernatural beings traditionally associated with Ireland's ancient mounds.

That makes the name something like "woman of the fairy mound." And contrary to many movie versions, a banshee traditionally doesn't scream someone to death. Her mournful keening warns that a death is approaching, making her more of a supernatural messenger than an attacker.

Sometimes a monster's name tells you exactly what you're getting. Werewolf comes from Old English werwulf, combining wer, meaning "man," with wulf, meaning "wolf." In other words, the fearsome name basically means "man-wolf."

The interesting part is that wer was once an ordinary word for a male person before disappearing from everyday English. Meanwhile, the alternative lycanthrope reaches almost the same destination through Greek: lykos means "wolf," and anthrōpos means "human being."

Today, finding your doppelgänger might mean spotting somebody who looks uncannily like you. The German word is wonderfully straightforward: doppel means "double," while Gänger means "goer." English speakers began using doppelgänger during the 19th century.

Originally, however, this wasn't merely a word for two strangers who could pass for siblings. A doppelgänger could be an eerie supernatural counterpart of a living person. Over time, the ghostly implications faded, leaving us with a convenient, and much less alarming, word for a look-alike.

If a ghost spends the night knocking things around, German already has the perfect name for it. Poltergeist combines a verb meaning "to knock" or "make a racket" with Geist, meaning "spirit." Literally, it's essentially a "knocking spirit."

That explains why poltergeists differ from the stereotypical silent apparition floating down a hallway. Their calling card is physical commotion: bangs, mysterious noises, and moving objects.

Long before the golem became a legendary creature, its name appeared in the Hebrew Bible. In Psalm 139, the Hebrew golem refers to something unformed or unfinished, an intriguing origin for a being traditionally fashioned from lifeless material.

Jewish folklore eventually transformed the idea into an artificial humanlike figure, commonly created from clay and animated through sacred knowledge.

Here's a surprisingly gentle name for a decidedly ungentle monster. Chimera comes ultimately from Greek chimaira, meaning "she-goat." Yet the mythological Chimera was no ordinary farm animal: ancient accounts combined parts of a lion, goat, and serpent into one fire-breathing beast.

The hero Bellerophon eventually defeated it while riding Pegasus. Its bizarre mixture of incompatible parts proved linguistically durable. A chimera later came to mean an impossible fantasy, while modern biology uses the same word for an organism containing genetically distinct populations of cells.

The Minotaur's name is practically a miniature plot summary. Greek Minōtauros combines the name Minos with tauros, meaning "bull." The famous monster is therefore, quite literally, the "bull of Minos."

According to Greek mythology, King Minos had the creature confined inside the Labyrinth designed by Daedalus on Crete. Theseus eventually killed the Minotaur and found his way back with Ariadne's help.

Break apart hippogriff, and half the creature immediately appears. Its first element ultimately comes from Greek hippos, meaning "horse," joined to griffin.

Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto featured the hippogriff in Orlando Furioso, first published in 1516. He imagined the flying animal as the impossible offspring of a mare and a griffin. Modern fantasy fans may know the creature from Harry Potter, but hippogriffs had already been around for roughly five centuries.

Kobolds were mischievous spirits in German folklore, appearing around homes or underground. Another remarkable oddity is the fact that one of these creatures managed to sneak onto the periodic table.

The element cobalt takes its name from kobold. German miners used the term "supernatural" for troublesome ores that failed to produce the metals they expected and could contain dangerous arsenic compounds. In the 18th century, Swedish chemist Georg Brandt established cobalt as a distinct element.

The Kraken came into English from Scandinavian tradition, where stories described an enormous sea creature lurking beneath northern waters. English records the word by the mid-18th century, when European writers were spreading accounts of the supposedly gigantic beast.

Its name contains a neat grammatical surprise. Scandinavian kraken is related to krake, with the final -n functioning as a definite article, essentially "the krake." Later encounters with real giant squid offered a tantalizing possible explanation for some old sea-monster stories.

A case of spelling ability and sheer luck

Is "muzjiks" a word? 10 Scrabble opening plays to win big

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We all know that the letters that score the most points in Scrabble are J and X (8 points), and Q and Z (10 points). But the most popular word game in the world is also about being able to combine all the lettered tiles that luck has handed you, even when they don't seem to have anything in common. One of the first things Scrabble players should learn is new and different words to help them win the game. In this article, we have compiled 10 words that—if the conditions are right—will make you score the most points in an opening play. Come join us!

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The highest-scoring possible play in Scrabble is a seven-letter opening move formed with the letters IJKMSUZ. Looks unpromising, right? To everyone's surprise, however, there's one word that's perfect for that hand: muzjiks. It's a pluralized, alternative spelling of the word muzhik, meaning a Russian peasant from the times before the Russian Revolution of 1917. Muzhik came into English thanks in large part to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Today, muzhik is used in Russian as the equivalent of "guy" or "dude."

Placing the Z on the Double Letter Score in this opening move would bring in 128 points. The odds of drawing these tiles are about 1 in 55 million, and, to be honest, the play has never been recorded in sanctioned play. However, in 2008, a man from South Carolina managed to open a game at the National Scrabble Championships with muzjiks, using a blank tile for the U, setting a record with a 126-point opening move.

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The second-highest opening move ever recorded in an American Scrabble tournament, for a wonderful 124 points, is bezique. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, bezique is "a card game similar to pinochle that is played with a pack of 64 cards."

Bezique originated in France in the 19th century and was later imported into Britain, where Winston Churchill was one of the game’s most prominent enthusiasts. Unfortunately, by the early 20th century, bezique declined in popularity, but at least it left us an excellent word for another great game: Scrabble.

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You are probably familiar with the word cacique, which refers to a native Indian chief in areas dominated primarily by Spanish cultures. Although it would be a good starting move, if instead of a second C you were lucky enough to get a Z, you could score a solid 124 points, and your chances of winning the game would be even greater.

Some dictionaries accept cazique as a variant of cacique. However, cazique has its own meaning: it refers to black-and-red or black-and-yellow orioles of the American tropics. Best of all, it is an accepted word in the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (OSPD)!

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Another great opening play for up to 124 points is mezquit. Here's another spelling variation of a word you probably already know, mesquite. According to Merriam-Webster, mesquite refers to "any of several spiny leguminous trees or shrubs, chiefly of the southwestern U.S., that often form extensive thickets and have sweet pods eaten by livestock."

To be fair, the word mesquite is an Anglicism of the Spanish word mezquite, which in turn was borrowed from the Nahuatl term mizquitl. So, it makes perfect sense that mezquit is an accepted word in Scrabble—and one of the good ones too!

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We are out of 124-point opening plays, so the next best thing is 122 points. And for that, we have a handful of good options. The first one is zombify, and as you can imagine, it has to do with zombies.

Believe it or not, this is an accepted word in Scrabble. Although zombies have been invading popular culture in recent years, the word zombify, meaning "to turn a person into a zombie," has been in our vocabulary for a long time. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word first appeared in The New York Times in the 1950s. So, the next time you are blessed with these promising tiles, don't miss the opportunity to kick-start the board with zombify.

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If you happen to draw the Z and Q tiles on your first play, you know you're up to big things. However, having those tricky consonants staring back at you can be a little intimidating. That's why it's nice to have some rare or unusual words up your sleeve to surprise even the most experienced players.

Quetzal is a strikingly colored bird commonly found in the humid forests of Central and South America. Interestingly, the quetzal has also been the currency of Guatemala since 1925. It was named after the bird, which is the national bird of the country. Now you know a new word and have a way to justify its use in your next Scrabble game!

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Okay, to present this word in an opening play of Scrabble, you should be lucky enough to draw the only two F's available up front. But even though it’s a one-in-a-million chance, knowing that this word exists can come in handy. Plus, it will give you up to 122 points — a good head start.

Squiffy means "intoxicated or drunk" and originated as a slang word in England at the end of the 19th century. The term probably derives from skew-whiff, which means "crooked or askew," or from swipey, meaning "tipsy."

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If you want to impress your friends with another rare Russian word accepted by the OSPD — and earn a well-deserved 122 inaugural points — then sovkhoz may be the way to go. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, a sovkhoz is a "state-operated agricultural estate in the U.S.S.R. organized according to industrial principles for specialized large-scale production."

Sovkhoz is short for sovetskoe khozyaĭstvo, meaning "soviet farm." These large state farms began to be created in 1918, and the term first appeared in 1921 in the Russian Economist. By 1990, there were 23,500 sovkhozy, and although they were eventually disbanded with the fall of the Soviet Union, the term is still there for us to play in Scrabble.

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If we say zymurgy, do you know what we are talking about? Perhaps you know this practice better as zymology, but zymurgy is also accepted and will give you more points in an opening play of Scrabble.

Zymurgy is a branch of applied chemistry that studies fermentation processes, especially those related to winemaking and brewing. The term was coined in the 19th century and derives from the Greek zymo, which means "leaven," combined with the suffix urgy, meaning "work." Fun fact: zymurgy is the last word in many English language dictionaries!

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Scrabble is not just about odd and difficult words. There are a bunch of regularly used words in the English language that will earn you up to 122 points at the start of a game — that is, if you are lucky enough to get the correct letters, of course!

Squeeze ("to hold tightly") and quickly ("in a short time") are two good words that any Scrabble player should always keep in mind. Jukebox (a machine that plays recorded music for money), on the other hand, is an excellent and recognizable word that any opponent will accept as correct without needing to check the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary.