"witch-ridden" meaning in English

{
  "etymology_text": "Originally used to describe horses that remained thin and did not thrive despite feeding, from the notion in folklore that witches rode (and tired out) such horses at night.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "?"
      },
      "expansion": "witch-ridden",
      "name": "en-adj"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "adj",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1877, James Melville Beard, K. K. K. Sketches, Humorous and Didactic Treating the More Important Events of the Ku-Klux-Klan Movement in the South With a Discussion of the Causes Which Gave Rise to It and the Social and Political Issues Emanating From It, Library of Alexandria, →ISBN:",
          "text": "Even the chickens on their roosts were witch-ridden,[…]",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1911, Society for Psychical Research (Great Britain), Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, page 88:",
          "text": "Mrs. Piper would be a much more convincing apparition if she could have come to us out of the blue, instead of trailing behind her a nebulous ancestry of magnetic somnambules, witch-ridden children, and ecstatic nuns.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012 May 23, R. T. Davies, Four Centuries of Witch Beliefs (RLE Witchcraft), Routledge, →ISBN:",
          "text": "Parliament in the seventeenth century an unsatisfactory barometer of public opinion because the franchise was irregularly distributed and the witch-ridden south-east over-represented.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Thin and weak; (figuratively) thinly populated."
      ],
      "id": "en-witch-ridden-en-adj-PnMbTCoU",
      "links": [
        [
          "Thin",
          "thin"
        ],
        [
          "weak",
          "weak"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "witch-ridden"
}

{
  "etymology_text": "Originally used to describe horses that remained thin and did not thrive despite feeding, from the notion in folklore that witches rode (and tired out) such horses at night.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "?"
      },
      "expansion": "witch-ridden",
      "name": "en-adj"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "adj",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English adjectives",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1877, James Melville Beard, K. K. K. Sketches, Humorous and Didactic Treating the More Important Events of the Ku-Klux-Klan Movement in the South With a Discussion of the Causes Which Gave Rise to It and the Social and Political Issues Emanating From It, Library of Alexandria, →ISBN:",
          "text": "Even the chickens on their roosts were witch-ridden,[…]",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1911, Society for Psychical Research (Great Britain), Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, page 88:",
          "text": "Mrs. Piper would be a much more convincing apparition if she could have come to us out of the blue, instead of trailing behind her a nebulous ancestry of magnetic somnambules, witch-ridden children, and ecstatic nuns.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012 May 23, R. T. Davies, Four Centuries of Witch Beliefs (RLE Witchcraft), Routledge, →ISBN:",
          "text": "Parliament in the seventeenth century an unsatisfactory barometer of public opinion because the franchise was irregularly distributed and the witch-ridden south-east over-represented.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Thin and weak; (figuratively) thinly populated."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "Thin",
          "thin"
        ],
        [
          "weak",
          "weak"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "witch-ridden"
}