What does "werewolf" mean?

A person who is transformed or can transform into a wolf or a wolflike human, often said to do so during a full moon.

What is a synonym for "werewolf"?

Common synonyms include: lycanthrope, wolfman, ape-man, bete noire, bogey, bogeyman.

Werewolf

//ˈwɛəɹwʊlf// noun

noun ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun

1
A person who is transformed or can transform into a wolf or a wolflike human, often said to do so during a full moon.
"Near-synonym: dogman"
2
a monster able to change appearance from human to wolf and back again wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

lycanthrope wolfman ape-man bete noire bogey bogeyman

Example

More examples

""Oh, right, you're a werewolf, aren't you?" "I'm mixed blood, so I don't transform or anything.""

Etymology

From Middle English werwolf, from Old English werewulf, from Proto-West Germanic *werawulf, from Proto-West Germanic *wer (“man”) + *wulf (“wolf”). Cognate with Dutch weerwolf, Low German Warwulf, German Werwolf, Danish varulv, Swedish varulv, and even possibly Finnish vironsusi. By surface analysis, were- + wolf. * Compare French garou in loup-garou; French dialectal gairou, varou (“werewolf”); Medieval Latin gerulphus, garulphus (“werewolf”); all from Germanic, probably Frankish *werawulf.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.