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Witchwind

Folklore
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A supernatural wind that carries curses, whispers, or lost souls, often felt before a witch’s arrival or a storm’s onset.

Detailed Definition
Witchwind in poetry represents the breath of the unseen. It appears in landscape and ghost verse as the sigh between trees, the cold that lingers where no one stands—where the wind is not weather, but voice, and the air remembers what the earth has buried.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Yeats’ “A Vision,” the witchwind is the breath that carries the spirit’s voice: “The wind that sings through the hollow reed”; in Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the witchwind is the wind that drives the ship without sail; in Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale,” the witchwind is the breeze that carries the bird’s song into the dark; in Thomas Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush,” the witchwind is the wind that carries the last note of the thrush; in Emily Dickinson’s “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died,” the witchwind is the breath that stills the room; in Sylvia Plath’s “The Applicant,” the witchwind is the current that pulls the suit into the void.
Additional Notes
Witchwind is a supernatural wind that carries curses, whispers, or lost souls, often felt before a witch’s arrival or a storm’s onset. In folklore, it is the breath of the unseen. In poetry, it symbolizes the intangible, the passage of time, and the haunting of absence. Poets use it to evoke unease, memory, and the whisper of what is coming.
Also Known As
Witch Wind Dark Breeze
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