hoodoo

English

Etymology

Apparently an alteration of voodoo.

Some hoodoos (spires of rock).

A hoodoo, showing why it is also called a tent rock.

Pronunciation

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

Noun

hoodoo (countable and uncountable, plural hoodoos)

1. (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.
2. (chiefly US) A practitioner of voodoo.
3. (chiefly US) Supernatural bad luck, or something or someone believed to bring bad luck.
4. (geology) A tall thin spire of rock that protrudes from the bottom of arid basins and badlands.
   • 2013, Philipp Meyer, The Son, Simon & Schuster, published 2014, page 71:

     It was even larger than the mirage made it look—a dozen miles across and a thousand feet deep, with fins and towers and hoodoos like observation posts, mesas and minor buttes, springs flowing brightly in the red rock.

Synonyms

• (spire of rock): tent rock, fairy chimney, earth pyramid

Translations

spire of rock

• Catalan: xemeneia de fades f
• Dutch: aardpiramide, aardpijler
• French: cheminée de fée (fr) f
• German: Erdpyramide f, Erdpfeiler m
• Japanese: 土ど柱ばしら (どちゅう, dochū)
• Portuguese: chaminé de fada f
• Russian: худу (xudu)
• Spanish: chimenea de hadas f
• Swedish: jordpyramid c, jordpelare c

Verb

hoodoo (third-person singular simple present hoodoos, present participle hoodooing, simple past and past participle hoodooed)

1. (transitive) To jinx; to bring bad luck or misfortune to.

References

• “hoodoo”, Bill Casselman