Lorelei
name, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A siren; a temptress.
"We grew silly, tongue-tied, said foolish things we did not mean to say, shoved one another about in the boat, and finally overturned it. The loreleis laughed musical little laughs."
- 1 A female given name from German.
Example
More examples"Die Lorelei is a popular German folk song."
Etymology
From the Lorelei rock on the Rhine, which was haunted by one of these creatures according to German legend.
Borrowed from German Lorelei (“murmuring rock or lurking rock”), but not used as a given name in Germany. The Lorelei (or Lorelei, Loreleï, Lore Lay, Lore-Ley, Lurley, Lurelei, Lurlei) is an infamous maritime disaster site because of the Rhine's current and the surrounding terrain. The shipwrecks have been subject to mythological explanation attempts since around 900 AD.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.