Word.ws English Dictionary

mãe-de-santo

mãe-de-santo noun: a priestess of an Afro-Brazilian religion.

Noun

mãe-de-santo (plural mães-de-santo or mãe-de-santos)

  1. A priestess of an Afro-Brazilian religion.
    • The imprecations of the mãe-de-santo filled the night more than the sound of the different drums that were soothing Ogun.1988, Jorge Amado, translated by Gregory Rabassa, Captains of the Sands, Penguin, published 2013, page 87
    • His mãe-de-santo, however, insisted that this was the spirit who was taking possession of his body.2011, Mattijs van de Port, Ecstatic Encounters, page 197

Forms of mãe-de-santo

pluralmães-de-santo
pluralmãe-de-santos

Origin of mãe-de-santo

From Portuguese mãe-de-santo, translating Yoruba ìyálórìṣà.

Questions about mãe-de-santo

What does mãe-de-santo mean?
Mãe-de-santo means a priestess of an Afro-Brazilian religion.
What part of speech is mãe-de-santo?
Mãe-de-santo is a noun.
What is the plural of mãe-de-santo?
The plural of mãe-de-santo is mães-de-santo.

Words near mãe-de-santo in the dictionary

  1. Mâlain
  2. Mândra
  3. Mânzălești
  4. Mânăileasa
  5. Mârzănești
  6. mãe-de-santo
  7. mämmi
  8. männlein
  9. männleins
  10. Mänti
  11. Mäori

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mãe-de-santo (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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