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VAMPIRE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
(folklore) a corpse that rises at night to drink the blood of the living
Synonyms:
lamia; vampire
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("vampire" is a kind of...):
evil spirit (a spirit tending to cause harm)
Domain category:
folklore (the unwritten lore (stories and proverbs and riddles and songs) of a culture)
Context examples:
I was glad to see her paleness and her illness, for my mind was full of the fresh horror of that ruddy vampire sleep.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
We have on our side power of combination—a power denied to the vampire kind; we have sources of science; we are free to act and think; and the hours of the day and the night are ours equally.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
To one thing I have made up my mind: if we find out that Mina must be a vampire in the end, then she shall not go into that unknown and terrible land alone.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
Some sailor may have brought one home, and it managed to escape; or even from the Zoölogical Gardens a young one may have got loose, or one be bred there from a vampire.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
One of those big bats that they call vampires had got at her in the night, and what with his gorge and the vein left open, there wasn't enough blood in her to let her stand up, and I had to put a bullet through her as she lay.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
She was bitten by the vampire when she was in a trance, sleep-walking—oh, you start; you do not know that, friend John, but you shall know it all later—and in trance could he best come to take more blood.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
I must say they were not cheering to me, for amongst them were Ordog—Satan, pokol—hell, stregoica—witch, vrolok and vlkoslak—both of which mean the same thing, one being Slovak and the other Servian for something that is either were-wolf or vampire.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
Usually when the Un-Dead sleep at home—as he spoke he made a comprehensive sweep of his arm to designate what to a vampire was home—their face show what they are, but this so sweet that was when she not Un-Dead she go back to the nothings of the common dead.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
I suppose it is thus that in old times one vampire meant many; just as their hideous bodies could only rest in sacred earth, so the holiest love was the recruiting sergeant for their ghastly ranks.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
This vampire which is amongst us is of himself so strong in person as twenty men; he is of cunning more than mortal, for his cunning be the growth of ages; he have still the aids of necromancy, which is, as his etymology imply, the divination by the dead, and all the dead that he can come nigh to are for him at command; he is brute, and more than brute; he is devil in callous, and the heart of him is not; he can, within limitations, appear at will when, and where, and in any of the forms that are to him; he can, within his range, direct the elements; the storm, the fog, the thunder; he can command all the meaner things: the rat, and the owl, and the bat—the moth, and the fox, and the wolf; he can grow and become small; and he can at times vanish and come unknown.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
