Forms: 4 lamya, 4– lamia. Pl. 4 lamie, 7, 9 lamiæ, 9 lamias. Also (anglicized) 4 lamȝe, 4, 6 lamye, 8 lamie. [L. lamia a witch who was supposed to suck children’s blood, a sorceress, also, a kind of flatfish, a species of owl, a. Gr. Λάμια a fabulous monster, also, a fish of prey. Cf. F. lamie.]
1. A fabulous monster supposed to have the body of a woman, and to prey upon human beings and suck the blood of children. Also, a witch, she-demon.
The word is used in early translations of the Bible in Isa. xxxiv. 15 and Lam. iv. 3, where the A.V. has respectively ‘shrichowle,’ marg. ‘Or, night-monster,’ and ‘sea monsters,’ marg. ‘Or, sea calues.’
1382. Wyclif, Isa. xxxiv. 15. There shal lyn lamya … and he fyndeth to himself reste. Ibid., Lam. iv. 3. The cruel beestis clepid lamya, nakeden ther tetes, ȝeeuen ther whelpus souken.
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., XVIII. xlviii. (1495), 809. In Sicia ben beestys wyth shape of men and fete of horses: and suche wonderfull beestys ben callyd Lamie amonge many men.
1621. Burton, Anat. Mel., II. ii. I. i. (1660), 438. Apollonius … by some probable conjectures, found her out to be a Serpent, a Lamia. [Hence 1820 Keats (title), Lamia.]
1622. Massinger, Virg. Mart., IV. i. Where’s the lamia That tears my entrails?
1674. Cotton, Compl. Gamester (1680), 13. For here you shall be quickly destroy’d under pretence of kindness, as Men were by the Lamiæ of old.
1757. E. Perronet, Mitre, I. xi. As plump as Lamies fed with fawn.
1865. Baring-Gould, Were-wolves, xv. 255. Troops of lamias, female evil spirits.
1871. B. Taylor, Faust (1875), II. II. iii. 113. They are the Lamiæ, wenches vile, With brazen brows and lips that smile.
† 2. Ichth. In Willoughby’s and some later classifications, a genus of sharks. Obs.
1727–41. Chambers, Cycl., s.v. Fish, The canis carcharias, or lamia, the white shark.
1776. J. Neill, 23 Serm., 214. Whatever kind of fish it was, whether it was a whale or a lamia, as some think, where is the occasion for laughing at, and condemning this passage of holy write as fabulous.
3. Ent. A genus of longicorn beetles (J. C. Fabricius, 1775).
In recent Dicts.
