Wicca
//ˈwɪkə// name
name ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 the polytheistic nature religion of modern witchcraft whose central deity is a mother goddess; claims origins in pre-Christian pagan religions of western Europe wordnet
- 2 a community of followers of the Wicca religion wordnet
Proper Noun
- 1 A neopagan religion that was first popularized by books written in 1949, 1954, and 1959 by the Englishman Gerald Gardner, involving the worship of a horned male god and a moon goddess, the observance of eight Sabbats, and the performance of various rituals.
Etymology
A twentieth-century borrowing of Old English wiċċa (“male witch”) (from Proto-West Germanic *wikkō (“sorcerer”)) with a spelling pronunciation. The modern use of the term was introduced first as Wica, mentioned briefly in the tenth chapter of Gerald Gardner's book Witchcraft Today (1954), as a collective noun ("the Wica"), allegedly used as a self-designation by practitioners of witchcraft. The spelling Wicca, again as a collective noun, was introduced and popularized by Gerald Gardner's later book, The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.