voldemort
/ˈvoʊldəˌmɔɹ(t)/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.01 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
3
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "[…] Oscar has been called the Voldemort of Fleet Street by both friends and enemies. He was apparently ruthless in all his business dealings.'"
- "If you asked me to identify a Voldemort in the myth of “social media,” it would be these people, and not guys like Gary Vaynerchuk."
- "Fructose is the Voldemort of the metabolic syndrome pandemic: stealthy, ever-present, and bad for the common good."
- "Rather than just extracting one taboo word and replacing it with another, online Voldemorts spread and mutate into dozens, even hundreds, of potential synonyms. […] (In perhaps the most ironic example of Voldemorting, I once tweeted the word Voldemort itself and my tweet was liked by two separate parody Voldemort accounts, presumably hoping to juice their follower count through a little social media Dark Arts.)"
- "PhD candidate and attendee NatalieZed (2015a, 2015b) instead Voldemorted the hashtag by using #Deatheaters – a term for Voldemort’s supporters, also from the Harry Potter novels – to refer to Gamergate harassers: […]"
- "“We don't speak Daphne's name in this house,” Kaya explains to me. Jee-zus. One measly stomach pumping and poor Daphne gets Voldemorted? The Kappa Beta Nu chapter of Briar University is evidently a lot stricter than the Brown chapter."
Etymology
After the evil wizard Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter, coined by author J. K. Rowling as a compound of French vol de mort (“a flight or theft from death”). Voldemort's birth name is Tom Marvolo Riddle; an anagram of it is "I am Lord Voldemort". The verb sense comes from the fact that in the story, many characters refuse to call Voldemort by his proper name, calling him euphemisms such as "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" or "You-Know-Who", because Voldemort puts a spell on his own name that alerts him when others speak it.
Origin
- Source language: French
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈvoʊldəˌmɔɹ(t)/
- British English: /ˈvəʊldəˌmɔː(t)/