Wendigo
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A malevolent and violent cannibal spirit found in Anishinaabe, Ojibwe, and Cree mythology, which is said to inhabit the body of a living person and possess him or her to commit murder.
"Through the pine woods of Keewaydin, / Over the snows of Shebandowan, / The Wendigo roams in the winter's frost / And pursues to destruction the hunter. / Yet no man can meet with the Wendigo, / No man can face him or see him; / Only his track in the snow is seen, / And lost is the hunter that sees it. […] The heart that ne'er quailed on the war-path / Turns to stone at the name of the Wendigo."
- 2 Synonym of splake (“kind of hybrid fish”).
Example
More examples"Through the pine woods of Keewaydin, / Over the snows of Shebandowan, / The Wendigo roams in the winter's frost / And pursues to destruction the hunter. / Yet no man can meet with the Wendigo, / No man can face him or see him; / Only his track in the snow is seen, / And lost is the hunter that sees it. […] The heart that ne'er quailed on the war-path / Turns to stone at the name of the Wendigo."
Etymology
Borrowed from Ojibwe wiindigoo, from Proto-Algonquian *wi·nteko·wa (“owl; malevolent spirit, cannibalistic monster”). Compare Cree wihtikow, ᐃᐧᐦᑎᑯᐤ (iyhtikow, “greedy person; cannibal; giant man-eating monster”).
Related phrases
More for "wendigo"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.