hoodoo
noun · verb
Simple meaning
Supernatural bad luck, or something or someone believed to bring bad luck.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
hoodooSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈhudu
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
chiefly us
Supernatural bad luck, or something or someone believed to bring bad luck.
uncountable
A set of spiritual practices and traditions created and concealed from slave-owners by enslaved Africans in North America, based on traditional African beliefs.
A practitioner of voodoo
verb
transitive
To jinx; to bring bad luck or misfortune to.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Frequency
- Rare
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Supernatural bad luck, or something or someone believed to bring bad luck.
Used this way, hoodoo is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Nearby words
- fetich , rarer, so it draws attention
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use hoodoo
- “A tall sandstone hoodoo.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.