Word.ws English Dictionary

tulpa

/ˈtʌlpə/

tulpa noun: a magical creature that attains corporeal reality, having been originally merely imaginary.

Noun

tulpa (plural tulpa or tulpas or (often in sense 2) tulpae)

  1. A magical creature that attains corporeal reality, having been originally merely imaginary.
    • When the year was up, the tulpa began growing. It lost its fear of its master and began taking on new forms of its own. It ceased to run errands ....1966, Nikos Kazantzakis, England: A Travel Journal, page 110
  2. A type of thought-form regarded as capable of independent action, with a persistent personality and identity; a kind of modern imaginary friend.

Forms of tulpa

pluraltulpa
pluraltulpas
plural oftentulpae

Origin of tulpa

Borrowed from Tibetan སྤྲུལ་པ (sprul pa, “emanation, magical creation”), equivalent to a calque of Sanskrit निर्मित (nirmita, “build”) or निर्माण (nirmāṇa, “build”).

Words formed from tulpa

Words that rhyme with tulpa

Questions about tulpa

What does tulpa mean?
Tulpa means a magical creature that attains corporeal reality, having been originally merely imaginary.
What part of speech is tulpa?
Tulpa is a noun.
How do you pronounce tulpa?
Tulpa is pronounced /ˈtʌlpə/.
What is the plural of tulpa?
The plural of tulpa is tulpa.

Words near tulpa in the dictionary

  1. tulopafant
  2. tulostomataceous
  3. tulou
  4. tulous
  5. Tulp's valve
  6. tulpa
  7. tulpae
  8. tulpamancer
  9. tulpamancers
  10. tulpamancy
  11. tulpas

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tulpa (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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