22493: Hess: dictionaries and the name of the religion of Haiti

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Dougrhess2@aol.com
To: corbetre@webster.edu
Subject: another voodoo/voudou
Parts/Attachments:
   1   OK    ~30 lines  Text (charset: ISO-8859-1)
   2 Shown   ~38 lines  Text (charset: ISO-8859-1)
----------------------------------------

    [ The following text is in the "ISO-8859-1" character set. ]
    [ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set.  ]
    [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ]

Here's the Merriam Webster definition from online. I just copied the part
about
etymology. It is interesting to see that they think that voudou is the
source
of the word voodoo. That seems to imply that somebody (hollywood and
others
maybe?) used the voodoo spelling and took this to mean the kind of things
people in the US normally associate with it: zombies, evil, black magic,
witchcraft, etc. If many dictionaries have that as a definition for the
voodoo
spelling, than it seems that Voudou maybe a better choice for English to
mean
the religion properly understood. Even if it has not, like many religions
made
it into the dictionary. Somebody should really start a campaign to get
dictionaries to clean up their definitions of this word. If they feel
"voodoo"
still has legit meaning (as in the public use of it to mean "spell" or
"magic
hex") they should at least note that that is an alternate definition or
spelling. Something like that, not an expert on how dictionaries do their
business.

Main Entry: [1]voodoo
Pronunciation: 'v-(")d
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s):  plural voodoos
Etymology: Louisiana Creole voudou, probably from Ewe vdu tutelary deity,
demon