Scrabble Bingo of the Day: REVENANT

REVENANT  n pl. -S  one that returns

61 points (11 points without the bingo)

Frankenstein. Vampires. Zombies. These creepy creatures are all examples of the UNDEAD, living entities that are technically dead but still animate. Some of these 'walking dead' feed off blood, others crave flesh and human brains. Some just murder out of pure wrath. They are CORPOREAL supernatural beings that have a body—have physical matter. Their INCORPOREAL counterparts lack physical being. They exist but are not composed of matter. Ghosts—the spiritual undead.

Another form of undead—REVENANTS. They can be either corporeal or incorporeal, REANIMATED corpse or visible ghost. A revenant sometimes refers to vampires, since 1928, because they were once thought to suck blood from living hosts. But in medieval folklore, revenants are undead that return for a specific purpose, either for revenge or for harassment, usually in ghost form.

Stories behind revenants are mostly personal, always specific to one individual who has recently died, one who was considered a wrongdoer in their lifetime. These evildoers return from deceased form to do harm, commonly to spread disease among the living.

How do you kill them? By DISINTERRING the dead corpse. Then comes decapitation, sometimes removal of the heart and subsequent burning of it. These acts were described by early authors, such as William of Newburgh, a monk named Walter Map, and an Abbot of Burton. In the case of VAMPIRIC revenants, a wooden stake in the heart does the trick, as seen in the 1850s lithograph below, Le Vampire.

In the world of horror movies, a revenant is best described as the corpse or spirit of a executed criminal that returns to seek revenge on its executioners (and the living in general). Examples include Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare of Elm Street, Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th, Michael Myers from Halloween, and a lesser known "Meat Cleaver" Max Jenke from The Horror Show—all great Halloween costumes.

For more ghostly revenants in horror movies, think of the Japanese film Ju-on, or the American remake, The Grudge.

Revenant is derived from the Latin word revenans, which means "returning," from the verb revenire. Revenant in French translates to "coming back," from the verb revenir, meaning "to come back".

Related Words

CORPOREAL  adj  having or consisting of a physical material body
DISINTER  v -TERRED, -TERRING, -TERS  to exhume
DYBBUK  n pl. -BUKS or -BUKIM  a wandering soul in Jewish folklore
EXHUME  v -HUMED, -HUMING, -HUMES  to dig out of the earth
INCORPOREAL  adj  having no material body or form
LEMURES  n/pl  the ghosts of the dead in ancient Roman religion
REANIMATE  v -MATED, -MATING, -MATES  to restore to life
UNDEAD  n pl. UNDEAD  a vampire
VAMPIRE  n pl. -S  a reanimated corpse believed to feed on sleeping persons' blood
VAMPIRIC  adj  (see above)
ZOMBI  n pl. -S  zombie
ZOMBIE  n pl. -S  a will-less human capable only of automatic movement
ZOMBIFY  v -FIED, -FYING, -FIES  to turn into a zombie

What's a Scrabble Bingo?

A bingo is when a player empties his or her rack in one turn, placing all seven of their letters on the board to create a word that's at least seven letters long. The term "bingo" is used primarily in the U.S., but elsewhere it's simply known as a "bonus" because you get a bonus of 50 points added to your turn's score. "Scrabble Bingo of the Day" will focus on these high scoring plays, teaching you some interesting and possibly unusual seven-letter or longer words accepted in a game of Scrabble.

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