Word.ws English Dictionary

lycanthropia

lycanthropia is the alternative form of lycanthropy.

Meaning of lycanthropy

Noun

lycanthropy (usually uncountable, plural lycanthropies)

  1. (usually) The state of being a lycanthrope (or werewolf), a person who can shapeshift between the form of a human being and a wolf, often said to happen involuntarily during a full moon; werewolfdom.
  2. (broadly, usually) The state of being a person who can shapeshift between the form of a human being and an animal, whether or not it is a wolf.
    • On one hand, Jacques is quite glad that he doesn’t have classic lycanthropy. Turning into a squirrel tends to cause fewer problems than turning into a wolf.2014, Marijn Haverbeke, “4: Data Structures: Objects and Arrays”, in Eloquent JavaScript, 2nd Ed.: A Modern Introduction to Programming, No Starch Press, →ISBN, page 60
    Synonyms:
    therianthropy
  3. (usually) A delusion in which one believes oneself to be a wolf or other wild animal.

Questions about lycanthropia

What is lycanthropia the alternative form of?
Lycanthropia is the alternative form of lycanthropy.

Words near lycanthropia in the dictionary

  1. lycaenids
  2. lycan
  3. lycans
  4. lycanthrope
  5. lycanthropes
  6. lycanthropia
  7. lycanthropic
  8. lycanthropically
  9. lycanthropies
  10. lycanthropist
  11. lycanthropists

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lycanthropia (page history and authors); lycanthropy (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: “lycanthropia.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lycanthropia. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.