Word.ws English Dictionary

sheela-na-gig

sheela-na-gig noun: a carving of a naked woman with an exaggerated vulva, found in old British and Irish architecture, perhaps used to ward off death and evil.

sheela-na-gig: a carving of a naked woman with an exaggerated vulva, found in old British and Irish architecture,...
Image: SiGarb, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

sheela-na-gig (plural sheela-na-gigs)

  1. A carving of a naked woman with an exaggerated vulva, found in old British and Irish architecture, perhaps used to ward off death and evil.

Forms of sheela-na-gig

pluralsheela-na-gigs

Origin of sheela-na-gig

From Irish Síle na gcíoch (“Julia of the breasts”). Attested in English from the 19th century.

Questions about sheela-na-gig

What does sheela-na-gig mean?
Sheela-na-gig means a carving of a naked woman with an exaggerated vulva, found in old British and Irish architecture, perhaps used to ward off death and evil.
What part of speech is sheela-na-gig?
Sheela-na-gig is a noun.
What is the plural of sheela-na-gig?
The plural of sheela-na-gig is sheela-na-gigs.

Words near sheela-na-gig in the dictionary

  1. sheek kebab
  2. sheek kebabs
  3. Sheeks
  4. Sheekses
  5. Sheela
  6. sheela-na-gig
  7. sheela-na-gigs
  8. Sheeler
  9. Sheelers
  10. sheelies
  11. sheelin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sheela-na-gig (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: “sheela-na-gig.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sheela-na-gig. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.