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Word for Wednesday: Banshee


Our Word for Wednesday theme for October is Halloween.

The word Halloween likely dates to the seventeenth century but was popularised in the Burns poem ‘Halloween’ which was written in 1785. It is a Scottish abbreviation of ‘Allhallow-even’ which means ‘Eve of the All Saints’.  ‘Hallow’ means ‘holy person’ or ‘saint’. 

Last week, we looked at the word witch and today’s word is banshee.

A banshee is a female spirit from Irish folklore whose wailing, screeching, or keening foretells impending death.

The word banshee has been used in English since 1711 and is a phonetic spelling of the Irish ‘bean sidhe’ which means ‘female of the elves’. ‘Bean sidhe’ comes from ‘bean’ meaning ‘woman’ and ‘sidhe’ meaning ‘fairy’ or ‘sid’ meaning ‘fairy mound’



12 Oct 2022
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Word, Banshee, Halloween, Meaning, Wednesday, Irish

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One of the students has put in a huge amount of effort in completing Spellzone at least 3 times a week since his arrival with us in January. Looking at his scores after the latest GL testing, his standardised score has risen from 99 to 131. This is a truly phenomenal result. I just wanted to share the best result I have ever seen.

Terrie Penrose-Toms, Casterton College

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