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Banshee vs Eidolon - What's the difference?

banshee | eidolon |

As nouns the difference between banshee and eidolon

is that banshee is banshee (in irish folklore, a female spirit) while eidolon is .

banshee

English

(wikipedia banshee)

Noun

(en noun)
  • In Irish folklore, a female spirit, usually taking the form of a woman whose mournful wailing warns of an impending death.
  • (derogatory) A noisy or ill-tempered woman.
  • * 1936 , , Steps Going Down , page 15:
    • Where's this old banshee that runs the place?

    Usage notes

    * A banshee was originally merely a fairy woman who sang a caoineadh (lament) for recently-deceased members of certain families. Translations of Irish works into English made a distinction between the banshee and other fairy folk that the original language and original stories do not seem to have, but from whence sprung the current image of the banshee.

    See also

    * sidhe

    Anagrams

    *

    eidolon

    English

    Alternative forms

    *

    Noun

    (en-noun)
  • An image or representation of an idea; a representation of an ideal form; an apparition of some actual or imaginary entity, or of some aspect of reality.
  • * 1936 , (Henry Miller), Black Spring :
    • As a species it is extinct; as an eidolon it retains its corporeality – but only if maintained in a state of equipoise.
  • *1974 , (Lawrence Durrell), Monsieur , Faber & Faber 1992, p. 21:
  • *:It was not hard to forge her image, her "eidolon ", in the grey gloom of the little church.
  • * 2006 , (Thomas Pynchon), Against the Day , Vintage 2007, p. 697:
    • Kit was sitting up staring into the dark at this eidolon , inelegantly turned out contrary to a whole raft of public-decency statutes, which had come monitory and breathing in to violate Kit's insomnia.
  • A phantom, a ghost or elusive entity.