"horcrux" meaning in All languages combined

See horcrux on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Forms: horcruxes [plural]
Etymology: Coined by author J. K. Rowling through the random "transposition of syllables," though fans have pointed to the possible influence of Middle English hore (“iniquity, evil, sin”) and English crux (“the central or essential part”). The term first appears in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005). Etymology templates: {{coin|en|J. K. Rowling|nat=|occ=author}} Coined by author J. K. Rowling, {{m|enm|hore||iniquity, evil, sin}} hore (“iniquity, evil, sin”), {{m|en|crux||the central or essential part}} crux (“the central or essential part”) Head templates: {{en-noun}} horcrux (plural horcruxes)
  1. In the Harry Potter series, an object in which a wizard has concealed a part of their soul through magic, rendering them immortal until the object is irreparably damaged or destroyed. Categories (topical): Harry Potter, Murder Synonyms: phylactery Translations (item in Harry Potter books): viteál [masculine] (Czech), hirnyrkki (Finnish), hortkuluk (Turkish)
    Sense id: en-horcrux-en-noun-8glPrC7w Disambiguation of Harry Potter: 97 3 Disambiguation of Murder: 76 24 Categories (other): Immortality Disambiguation of Immortality: 92 8 Disambiguation of 'item in Harry Potter books': 96 4
  2. (by extension) Something in which one has invested a part of one's self; an object which allows for the preservation of memory, culture, etc. Tags: broadly
    Sense id: en-horcrux-en-noun-D1VcUndi Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 37 63
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Synonyms: Horcrux

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for horcrux meaning in All languages combined (5.6kB)

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  "etymology_text": "Coined by author J. K. Rowling through the random \"transposition of syllables,\" though fans have pointed to the possible influence of Middle English hore (“iniquity, evil, sin”) and English crux (“the central or essential part”). The term first appears in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005).",
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  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "92 8",
          "kind": "other",
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          "name": "Immortality",
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          "_dis": "97 3",
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        {
          "ref": "2013, Adam Rawlins, The Strange Encounter of Sally Shakespeare and Toby Tinker, page 24",
          "text": "They stared at it as if it was the one ring or the holy grail or a horcrux, or perhaps all of them rolled into one. An empty, plastic cat food bowl.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2013, Teddy Steinkellner, Trash Can Days: A Middle School Saga, page 20",
          "text": "They were standard fit, vintage wash, pretty expensive, and I showed them to him and I said, “These are yours if you want them.” And do you know what he did? He actually flinched. Like these were haunted pants or something. Like these were Horcrux jeans with a piece of Lord Voldemort’s soul in them.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2016, Joe Halstead, West Virginia, page 38",
          "text": "Again, he didn’t say anything and she asked him about the arrowhead—was it his Horcrux or something? was there a piece of his soul trapped inside it?—and he shrugged it off.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
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        "In the Harry Potter series, an object in which a wizard has concealed a part of their soul through magic, rendering them immortal until the object is irreparably damaged or destroyed."
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      "id": "en-horcrux-en-noun-8glPrC7w",
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          "object",
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        [
          "wizard",
          "wizard"
        ],
        [
          "soul",
          "soul"
        ],
        [
          "magic",
          "magic"
        ],
        [
          "immortal",
          "immortal"
        ],
        [
          "irreparably",
          "irreparably"
        ],
        [
          "damaged",
          "damaged"
        ],
        [
          "destroyed",
          "destroyed"
        ]
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "phylactery"
        }
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "_dis1": "96 4",
          "code": "cs",
          "lang": "Czech",
          "sense": "item in Harry Potter books",
          "tags": [
            "masculine"
          ],
          "word": "viteál"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "96 4",
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "item in Harry Potter books",
          "word": "hirnyrkki"
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        {
          "_dis1": "96 4",
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          "sense": "item in Harry Potter books",
          "word": "hortkuluk"
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        {
          "ref": "2016, Cheryl B. Klein, The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults, page 338",
          "text": "When I read manuscripts, I feel very aware that some part of the writer's soul lives in the pages—like a good Horcrux, say—and if I’m turning one down, I need to do so with thoughtfulness and respect.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2016, Tommy Wallach, Thanks for the Trouble, Simon & Schuster",
          "text": "And I loved the way they looked, all those journals lined up on a single bookshelf in my room, carving a path through time that you could follow, like a trail of bread crumbs, from that first day in Dr. Milton’s office right up to the present. It was as if I’d archived myself inside them—my own private horcruxes.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2021, Curt Cloninger, Some Ways of Making Nothing: Apophatic Apparatuses in Contemporary Art, page 383",
          "text": "Via nostalgia and sentimentality, objects act for humans as unwitting mnemonic horcruxes (my analogy, not Schwenger’s), storing parts of our memories inside themselves for our later involuntary retrieval.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Something in which one has invested a part of one's self; an object which allows for the preservation of memory, culture, etc."
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}
{
  "categories": [
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    "English countable nouns",
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English nouns",
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    "English terms derived from Harry Potter",
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      "name": "m"
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          "type": "quotation"
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        {
          "ref": "2013, Teddy Steinkellner, Trash Can Days: A Middle School Saga, page 20",
          "text": "They were standard fit, vintage wash, pretty expensive, and I showed them to him and I said, “These are yours if you want them.” And do you know what he did? He actually flinched. Like these were haunted pants or something. Like these were Horcrux jeans with a piece of Lord Voldemort’s soul in them.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        {
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          "word": "phylactery"
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          "ref": "2016, Cheryl B. Klein, The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults, page 338",
          "text": "When I read manuscripts, I feel very aware that some part of the writer's soul lives in the pages—like a good Horcrux, say—and if I’m turning one down, I need to do so with thoughtfulness and respect.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2016, Tommy Wallach, Thanks for the Trouble, Simon & Schuster",
          "text": "And I loved the way they looked, all those journals lined up on a single bookshelf in my room, carving a path through time that you could follow, like a trail of bread crumbs, from that first day in Dr. Milton’s office right up to the present. It was as if I’d archived myself inside them—my own private horcruxes.",
          "type": "quotation"
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          "ref": "2021, Curt Cloninger, Some Ways of Making Nothing: Apophatic Apparatuses in Contemporary Art, page 383",
          "text": "Via nostalgia and sentimentality, objects act for humans as unwitting mnemonic horcruxes (my analogy, not Schwenger’s), storing parts of our memories inside themselves for our later involuntary retrieval.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
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        "Something in which one has invested a part of one's self; an object which allows for the preservation of memory, culture, etc."
      ],
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      ],
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    {
      "word": "Horcrux"
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  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "cs",
      "lang": "Czech",
      "sense": "item in Harry Potter books",
      "tags": [
        "masculine"
      ],
      "word": "viteál"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "item in Harry Potter books",
      "word": "hirnyrkki"
    },
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      "sense": "item in Harry Potter books",
      "word": "hortkuluk"
    }
  ],
  "wikipedia": [
    "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince",
    "Lord Voldemort"
  ],
  "word": "horcrux"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.