Vampire (pronounced vam-pahyuh)
(1) A
preternatural being, commonly believed to be a reanimated corpse, said to suck
the blood of sleeping persons at night.
(2) In the
folklore of the Balkans, Eastern & Central Europe, a corpse, animated by an
un-departed soul or demon, that periodically leaves the grave and disturbs the
living, until it is exhumed and impaled or burned.
(3) A person who
preys ruthlessly upon others; an extortionist or blackmailer.
(4) A woman who
unscrupulously exploits, ruins, or degrades the men she seduces (usually truncated
to vamp although nuances in meaning exist).
Despite many early references, vampiress
and vampirina never caught on.
(5) A type of
blood-sucking bat.
(6) A species of
crab.
(7) In the
theatre, a stage trapdoor.
(8) In medicine,
a colloquial term for a patient suffering from systemic lupus erythematosus, with effects such as photosensitivity
and brownish-red stained teeth.
1732: From the
now archaic vampyre (spectral being in a human body who maintains semblance of
life by leaving the grave at night to suck the warm blood of the living as they
sleep), from the French vampire and
German vampir, from the Hungarian (Magyar)
vampir, from the Old Church Slavonic opiri
(related to the Serbo-Croatian vampir,
Bulgarian vapir & Ukrainian uper). The Serbian vàmpīr, was an alteration of earlier upir (by confusion with doublets such as
vȁzdūh, ȕzdūh and with
intrusive nasal, as in dùbrava, dumbrȁva (grove)) and was related to the Czech upír, the Polish upiór, the Old Russian upyrĭ
& upirĭ and the Russian upýr.
Some etymologists suggest the ultimate source was the Kazan Tatar ubyr (witch) but not all agree, many
suggesting a Macedonian origin more probable.
An Eastern European creature popularized in English by late nineteenth
century gothic novels but scattered English accounts of night-walking,
blood-gorged, plague-spreading un-dead corpses have been traced back to 1196
and few doubt there was an oral tradition long pre-dating this. Influenced by the literature, the
blood-sucking bat was named in 1774 by the French gentlemen scientist, Georges-Louis
Leclerc, the Comte de Buffon (1707–1788).
Related adjectival forms are vampiric and vampirish, the noun vampirism
dating from 1737.
Figurative sense
of "person who preys on others" is from 1741, the idea of “one who
sucks money from others” being little worse than “one who sucks their blood”. The word vamp (a seductive woman who uses her
charms to exploit men" dates from 1911 and was short for vampire; it’s
entirely unrelated to the earlier term “vamp” from the trade of cobbling. Dracula was the name of the vampire king in
Bram Stoker's (1847-1912) Gothic horror novel Dracula (1897), a borrowing from Prince Vlad III of Wallachia (circa
1430-circa 1477; remembered in English as Vlad the Impaler and in Romania (where
he is celebrated as a national hero) as Vlad Drăculea.
The de
Havilland Vampire was a British jet fighter.
Although development began as early as 1941 and the aircraft first flew
in 1943, the problems associated with jet propulsion meant it entered service
too late to see combat during World War II, the first Vampires delivered to
Royal Air Force (RAF) squadrons only in 1946.
The second jet fighter to be operated by the RAF (the first the Gloster
Meteor), it was the first powered by a single engine, a configuration delayed
in development because of the poor thrust delivered by the early jets and the Vampire
was one of a number of aircraft released in the late 1940s which straddled the engineering
and aeronautical practices of the propeller and jet eras of fighters. The jet engine and the unusual twin-boom configuration
aside, it was a conventional design, borrowing much from de Havilland’s wartime
practices which had proved so effective including the use of molded plywood for
the frame, assembled as a glued sandwich to which was attached the aluminum skin.
The hybrid of old and new was a product of so much of the design work having been completed before an understanding of the advantages and possibilities of the swept wing pioneered by the Germans, notably with the Messerschmitt 262, had been gained. Without a swept wing, the Vampire would never achieve the performance of the more cutting edge designs which increasingly appeared in the late 1940s and was the last really simple interceptor to serve with the RAF. Despite that, for most of its operational life it was far from obsolescent and remained in front-line service until 1953, during which it set altitude records and was the first jet to fly a trans-Atlantic flight; the Sea Vampire naval variant being in December 1945 the first jet to take off from and land on an aircraft carrier. The last Vampires were retired from RAF service in 1966 but foreign services maintained them in operational use much longer, the Swiss using them still in the 1980s. Almost 3300 were built and their simplicity and ease of maintenance has meant many now in private hands continue to fly.
Vampire hunting used to be a thing (and debatably should still be) and for enthusiasts, Affiliated Auctions & Realty recently offered an early nineteenth century vampire slaying kit, fitted in a violin case. The kit includes a bronze crucifix, two wooden stakes, a 15 inch (380 mm) dagger with tusk grip, sterling pommel & bolster and nickel cross-guard, a flintlock pistol with engraved barrel and functioning stock, a brass powder horn in the style of a swimming fish, a hardwood mallet (for driving stakes through the heart), a brass container for shot powder, a wooden container for silver-shot balls, a glass holy water bottle (without seam lines) and a Holy Bible with mother of pearl inlay.
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