wicca
/ˈwɪkə/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.60 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
2
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
name
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).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *weyk-, *wikkō