Psychopomp
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A spirit, deity, person, etc., who guides the souls of the dead to the afterlife.
"As the souls of the departed are symbolized as rats, so is the psychopomp himself often figured as a dog. Sarameias, the Vedic counterpart of Hermes and Odin, sometimes appears invested with canine attributes; and countless other examples go to show that by the early Aryan mind the howling wind was conceived as a great dog or wolf."
- 2 a conductor of souls to the afterworld wordnet
Example
More examples"As the souls of the departed are symbolized as rats, so is the psychopomp himself often figured as a dog. Sarameias, the Vedic counterpart of Hermes and Odin, sometimes appears invested with canine attributes; and countless other examples go to show that by the early Aryan mind the howling wind was conceived as a great dog or wolf."
Etymology
From Latin psȳchopompus, from Ancient Greek ψῡχοπομπός (psūkhopompós), from ψῡχή (psūkhḗ, “soul”) + πομπός (pompós, “conductor”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.