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tupilak

tupilak noun: a monster (either invisible or having a physical form constructed from animal bones, sinew, etc) created in secret by a shaman and sent into the sea to seek and kill a specific enemy.

tupilak: a monster (either invisible or having a physical form constructed from animal bones, sinew, etc)...
Image: Ansgar Walk, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

tupilak (plural tupilaks or tupilat)

  1. (Inuit mythology) A monster (either invisible or having a physical form constructed from animal bones, sinew, etc) created in secret by a shaman and sent into the sea to seek and kill a specific enemy.
  2. A (small) representation of such a monster, often carved from whale bone.

Forms of tupilak

pluraltupilaks
pluraltupilat
alternative formtupilaq

Origin of tupilak

From Greenlandic tupilak or Inuktitut ᑐᐱᓚᒃ (topilak), ᑐᐱᓚᖅ (topilaq).

Questions about tupilak

What does tupilak mean?
Tupilak means a monster (either invisible or having a physical form constructed from animal bones, sinew, etc) created in secret by a shaman and sent into the sea to seek and kill a specific enemy.
What part of speech is tupilak?
Tupilak is a noun.
What is the plural of tupilak?
The plural of tupilak is tupilaks.

Words near tupilak in the dictionary

  1. Tupi-Guarani
  2. Tupian
  3. tupiit
  4. tupik
  5. tupiks
  6. tupilak
  7. tupilakosaurid
  8. tupilakosaurids
  9. tupilaks
  10. tupilaq
  11. tupilaqs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tupilak (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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