witch's teat

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English

Noun

witch's teat (plural witch's teats)

  1. A raised bump or wart on a person's body, formerly believed in some English-speaking cultures to indicate that the person was a witch and used the wart to provide blood to familiars.
    • 2008, Phillip Margulies, Maxine Rosaler, The Devil on Trial: Witches, Anarchists, Atheists, Communists, and Terrorists in America's Courtrooms, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, →ISBN, page 19:
      ... a “witch's teat.” A witch's teat was thought to serve the same function as the nipple of a nursing mother, but instead of providing milk to babies, it supplied blood to the witch's evil helpers, or familiars. A committee of […]
    • 2010 April 15, Christine L. Krueger, Reading for the Law: British Literary History and Gender Advocacy, University of Virginia Press, →ISBN, page 68:
      ... a witch's teat had no counterpart in Continental witchcraft theory. Women, credited because of their “good characters” rather than any professional expertise (though in the 1640s Matthew Hopkins would come to favor midwives), were […]
    • 2019 May 9, Frances Timbers, A History of Magic and Witchcraft: Sabbats, Satan & Superstitions in the West, Pen and Sword, →ISBN:
      ... temporary confinement. Before her trial, she would be examined under oath by the JP and perhaps examined for a witch's teat by several respectable women. If the justice of the peace felt there was sufficient evidence against her, she ...
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