Word.ws English Dictionary

Ankou

Ankou proper noun: the personification of death in Celtic mythology.

Proper noun

Ankou

  1. (Celtic mythology) The personification of death in Celtic mythology.
    • In the blackness of the night the muttering or yelling figures moved about like some spectral creatures from hellish regions—the Ankous of Brittany who call to those about to die[.]1906, Baroness Orczy, chapter 27, in I Will Repay, London

Origin of Ankou

Borrowed from French Ankou, from Breton Ankoù.

Questions about Ankou

What does Ankou mean?
Ankou means the personification of death in Celtic mythology.
What part of speech is Ankou?
Ankou is a proper noun.

Words near Ankou in the dictionary

  1. anko
  2. Ankole
  3. Ankole African mole-rat
  4. Ankole African mole-rats
  5. Ankole-Watusi
  6. Ankou
  7. ankress
  8. ankresses
  9. Ankrom
  10. Ankroms
  11. Ankrum

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Ankou (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Ankou.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ankou. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.