Meaning
In Irish and Scottish Gaelic folklore, a female spirit whose wailing or appearance warns a family that one of them will soon die. Figuratively, and now at least as commonly, it names anyone who screams or wails piercingly, as in 'she shrieked like a banshee' - a sense-drift from mournful supernatural omen to generic loud shrieking. The folklore sense is neutral and standard; the figurative sense is informal and usually exaggerated. Regional use: General English (borrowed from Irish).
Origin
An English phonetic rendering of Irish bean side (Modern Irish bean si), literally 'woman of the fairy mound': bean 'woman', from the same Indo-European root that gives English 'queen', plus side, denoting the fairy folk or the earthen mounds they were thought to inhabit (from a root meaning 'to sit'). Merriam-Webster glosses the Scottish Gaelic cognate bean sith identically as 'woman of fairyland'. The spirit was imagined keening outside a house where death was near. English adopted the word in the late 18th century - Merriam-Webster and the Online Etymology Dictionary both date the first known use to 1771 - and from her mournful wail grew the modern simile for anyone shrieking loudly.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- banshie
- bean si
- bean sidhe
Usage Examples
- Legend has it a banshee's keening can be heard the night before a death in certain old families.
- The toddler screamed like a banshee when the balloon floated away.
- In the film, a banshee haunts the cliff road, warning travelers of the storm to come.