werewolf: see lycanthropy lycanthropy , in folklore, assumption by a human of the appearance and characteristics of an animal. Ancient belief in lycanthropy was widespread, and it still exists in parts of the world.
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In European folklore, a man who changes into a wolf at night and devours animals, people, or corpses, returning to human form by day. Some werewolves are thought to change shape at will; others, who inherited the condition or acquired it by being bitten by a werewolf, are transformed involuntarily under the influence of a full moon. Belief in werewolves is found throughout the world and was especially common in 16th-century France. Humans who believe they are wolves suffer from a mental disorder called lycanthropy.
werewolf
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werewolf
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Lon Chaney, Jr., as a werewolf in The Wolf Man (1941).
(credit: Courtesy of Universal Pictures; photograph, Lincoln Center Library of the Performing Arts, New York Public Library)
werewolf
a person fabled in folklore and superstition to have been changed into a wolf by being bewitched or said to be able to assume wolf form at will
werewolf
a man transformed into a wolf. [Eur. Folklore: Benét, 1082]
See : Monsters
Werewolf
in folk belief, a man who allegedly has the ability to transform himself into a beast or, more rarely, into a bush, stone, or similar object. In the popular beliefs of European peoples, a werewolf is a sorcerer who has taken the form of a wolf or an ordinary man who has been turned into a wolf by a magic spell. Analogous popular beliefs are known to exist among the peoples of India, where instead of a wolf the beast is a tiger; in Africa, it is a leopard or hyena; and in South America, it is a jaguar.”
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