witching

1. 1
   adjective

   Connected with witchcraft or sorcery, or with witches and sorcerers.

   The campers told ghost stories until the witching hour, then lay awake listening to the wind.

   The court records describe witching rites held in the forest after dark.

   Similaroccult, magic

   Note

   The adjective grew from a Middle English participle, wicching or wicchand, and its natural home is the night. John Keats writes of "the witching time of night," and the witching hour carries the same idea: the dark hours when witches were imagined to be abroad.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of witch.

   Her grandfather spent the morning witching across the pasture with a willow rod before marking a spot for the well.

   The villagers accused the old woman of witching their cattle so that they gave no milk.

   Note

   The verb behind this form leads two quite different lives. A dowser witching for water walks the ground with a rod and takes no object; someone accused of witching the cattle has put a spell on them, and the victims are the object. A third use, simply practicing witchcraft, is obsolete.

3. 3
   noun

   Gerund of witch: an act of witchcraft.

   Each new witching left the townspeople more frightened of the woman on the hill.

   The healer claimed she could undo any witching with salt and a prayer.

   Note

   The noun has an older line than the adjective: it reaches back through Middle English wicchinge to Old English wiċċung, which already meant witchcraft. It counts single acts, so Christine Gentry's When Spirits Walk (2002) can speak of a man exposed to more witchings every month than most people meet in a lifetime.

4. 4
   adjective

   Of a person, having the power to bewitch, as by casting spells on people, animals, or things.

   The tale centers on a witching widow whose glance could sour milk and lame horses.

   Villagers kept their children away from the witching stranger who had moved into the old mill.

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