sb. Also voudoo, voudou, vudu, voodu, and VAUDOUX. (Cf. HOODOO.) [African (Dahomey) vodu.]
1. A body of superstitious beliefs and practices, including sorcery, serpent-worship, and sacrificial rites, current among negroes and persons of negro blood in the West Indies and southern United States, and ultimately of African origin.
1880. G. W. Cable, Grandissimes, xiv. Do this much for me this one time and then I will let voudou alone as much as you wish.
1884. Lisbon (Dakota) Star, 20 Sept. The Voudoos of Louisiana … were recently viewed at the funeral of a negress, one of the Queens of Voudoo.
1888. Daily News, 15 June, 5/1. As generally understood, Voodoo means the persistence, in Hayti, of abominable magic, mysteries, and cannibalism, brought originally by the negroes from Africa.
2. One who practises voodoo; a negro sorcerer or witch.
1866. New Orleans Daily Crescent, 25 Sept., 1/6. Those who knelt to him were doubtless colored voodoos. They worship crocodiles in Africa.
1880. G. W. Cable, Grandissimes, xii. She practised the less baleful rites of the voudous.
1880. New Orleans Picayune, 20 May. The fool spends all her money to do us harm, thinking she is a voudou.
1888. Daily News, 15 June, 5/2. Accused, like the Voodoos, of serpent-worship.
3. attrib., as voodoo dance, doctor, priest, etc.
1885. Boston (Mass.) Jrnl., 17 Aug., 2/4. Under the influence of some withered old mummy of a voudoo-doctor.
1887. Lang, Myth, Ritual & Relig., II. 240. The Voodoo-dance is consecrated as the ‘Jerusalem Jump.’
1888. Pall Mall G., 4 July, 13/2. An old negro woman who claims to be a great voudoo doctor.
1905. W. E. B. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, x. 198. Weird midnight orgies and mystic conjurations were invoked, the witch-woman and the voodoo-priest became the centre of Negro group life, and that vein of vague superstition which characterizes the unlettered Negro even to-day was deepened and strengthened.
Hence voodoo v. trans., to bewitch, to cast a spell over, by means of voodoo arts.
1880. G. W. Cable, Grandissimes, xxix. It is true, as he says, that he is voudoued.
1880. New Orleans Picayune, 20 May. She flung this over into my yard to voudou me…. She would spend her last dollar to voudou me.
1885. C. F. Holder, Marvels Anim. Life, 117. Averring that they had been ‘voudoued’ and nearly killed by the … fish.
