Samhein
Samhein is the alternative form of Samhain.
Meaning of Samhain
Proper noun
Samhain
- A holiday, falling on the night of 31 October to 1 November, mentioned in Early Irish literature and celebrated by modern neo-pagans as the beginning of winter and the new year, and a time during which the spirits of the dead could return to the earth.
- Invite, but never command, friendly spirits, faeries, or elementals to join you as you wish. In some traditions it is common to invite ancestors to join you, especially during the dark days from Samhain to Imbolg when it is believed that the portal between our dimensions is at its thinnest.1994, Edain McCoy, “Appendix Three: Outline for Ritual Construction”, in A Witch’s Guide to Faery Folk: How to Work with the Elemental World: […], St. Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn Publishers, published...
- Synonyms:
- Halloween, November Eve
Questions about Samhein
- What is Samhein the alternative form of?
- Samhein is the alternative form of Samhain.
Words near Samhein in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Samhein (page history and authors); Samhain (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: “Samhein.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/samhein. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
