vampire

英文詞源

vampire

vampire: [18] Vampire probably goes back ultimately to ubyr, a word for ‘witch’ in the Kazan Tatar language of an area to the east of Moscow. This was borrowed into Russian as upyr’, and from there probably found its way into Hungarian as vampir. English acquired it via French vampire or German vampir. The application of the word to a type of bloodsucking bat was introduced by the 18th-century French biologist Buffon.

vampire (n.)

spectral being in a human body who maintains semblance of life by leaving the grave at night to suck the warm blood of the living as they sleep, 1734, from French vampire (18c.) or German Vampir (1732, in an account of Hungarian vampires), from Hungarian vampir, from Old Church Slavonic opiri (cognates: Serbian vampir, Bulgarian vapir, Ukrainian uper), said by Slavic linguist Franc Miklo?i? to be ultimtely from Kazan Tatar ubyr "witch," but Max Vasmer, an expert in this linguistic area, finds that phonetically doubtful. An Eastern European creature popularized in English by late 19c. gothic novels, however there are scattered English accounts of night-walking, blood-gorged, plague-spreading undead corpses from as far back as 1196. Figurative sense of "person who preys on others" is from 1741. Applied 1774 by French biologist Buffon to a species of South American blood-sucking bat. Related: Vampiric.