Definition of "lycanthropy" []

• In folklore, the magical ability to assume the form and characteristics of a wolf. (noun)
• A delusion that one has become or assumed the characteristics of a wolf or other animal. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "[1] The word lycanthropy is sometimes used generically for any transformation of a human into animal form, though the precise term for that is technically \ "therianthropy\"."
• "He described also the strange disease called lycanthropy, a form of insanity in which the patient thinks himself a wolf, and leaves his home at night to wander amongst the tombs."
• "On this mysterious chastisement, which some think consisted in an attack of the madness called lycanthropy, as well as on the interregnum which it must have caused, Babylonian annals are silent: clever hypotheses have been devised either to explain this silence, or in scanning documents in order to find in them traces of the wanted interregnum"