medicine man

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medicine man

1. A male shaman or shamanistic healer, especially among Native American peoples.

2. A hawker of nostrums among the audience in a medicine show.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

medicine man

(Anthropology & Ethnology) (among certain peoples, esp North American Indians) a person believed to have supernatural powers of healing; a magician or sorcerer

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

med′icine man`

a person believed to possess magical powers, esp. among North American Indians; shaman.

[1795–1805]

medicine man

Also called a shaman, this is someone with magic powers resulting from contact with the supernatural. Common in the religion of the Inuits, Maoris, Mongolians, Polynesians and Native Americans.

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Noun

medicine man - a Native American shaman

rainmaker - American Indian medicine man who attempt to make it rain

priest-doctor, shaman - in societies practicing shamanism: one acting as a medium between the visible and spirit worlds; practices sorcery for healing or divination

Translations

medicine man

n → stregone m

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

medicine man

n. curandero.

English-Spanish Medical Dictionary © Farlex 2012

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References in classic literature ?

"If we keep friends with them," said he, "we have nothing to fear from the Blackfeet, and can rule the mountains." Arapooish pretended to be a great "medicine man", a character among the Indians which is a compound of priest, doctor, prophet, and conjurer.

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Gentlemen, a metaphysician is a medicine man. The difference between you and the Eskimo who makes a fur-clad blubber-eating god is merely a difference of several thousand years of ascertained facts.

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Likewise is there a white man's medicine man, what you call missionary.

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"All right, you Haeckelites, I may reason like a medicine man, but, pray, how do you reason?

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Ngurn, whom Bassett was to know afterward as the devil-devil doctor, priest, or medicine man of the village, had wanted his head.

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The little communities, still haunted by ten thousand memories of a greater state, gathered and developed almost tacitly a customary law and fell under the guidance of a medicine man or a priest.

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Only Yuma the Medicine Man sees Arlyn for who and what she is.

Arlyn And The Purloin Bane

Reportedly developed by a medicine man whose ingredients were considered a "fountain of youth," 505 Southwestern's organic salsa (3 pack of 10-ounce bottles for $20.95) provides a low-carbohydrate, low-sodium way to gorge without the guilt.

Hot fun in the summertime

Crusoe to steal the valuable kadaicha boots once worn by a medicine man. An overly simplistic resolution reveals the root of Marie-Claire's emotional problems and finds PJ willing to resurrect the friendship, this time on honest terms.

Murray, Kirsty. Walking home with Marie-Claire

Exhibitions this year include: Museum of the Mind: Art and Memory in World Cultures, until September 7 and Medicine Man: The Forgotten Museum of Henry Wellcome.

GO: ART: BRUSH STROKES

MEDICINE MAN: John Taylor at the flower show and, right, Deborah Fell and Sarah Wozmak from Formby get into the spirit of things Pictures: JOHN DALY and COLIN LANE

A REAL SAGE; Herb doctor John reveals remedies

Out on a Montana Indian reservation, a medicine man directs a Sun Dance ceremony.