bocor
English edit
Alternative forms edit
Etymology edit
From Haitian Creole bòkò, from Fon bókɔ́nɔ̀ (“soothsayer”).
Pronunciation edit
- (General American) IPA(key): /boʊˈkoɹ/
Noun edit
bocor (plural bocors)
- (voodoo) A voodoo practitioner who deals with malefic as well as beneficial effects; a sorcerer.
- 1985, Wade Davis, The Serpent and the Rainbow, Simon & Schuster, page 47:
- “The bokor who knows the magic can make anyone a zombi—a Haitian living abroad, a foreigner.”
- 1989, James A. Michener, Caribbean:
- The corpse is buried in all solemnity, and two days later, at dead of night, the bocor digs it up, stops feeding it salt, and has himself a zombie.
- 1995, Elizabeth McAlister, in Cosentino (ed.), Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, South Sea International Press 1998, page 305:
- A bòkò is an entrepreneur, and has a reputation as a man who will “work with both hands,” that is, for healing and revenge.
- 2017, Salman Rushdie, The Golden House, Jonathan Cape, published 2017, page 180:
- It seemed to him that he was […] surrendering all agency and becoming hers to command, as if she were a Haitian bokor and he at lunch at Bergdorf Goodman had been administered the so-called zombie's cucumber which confused his thought processes and made him her slave for life.
Anagrams edit
Indonesian edit
Pronunciation edit
Verb edit
bocor
Derived terms edit
Further reading edit
- “bocor” in Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia, Jakarta: Agency for Language Development and Cultivation — Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology of the Republic Indonesia, 2016.