Is there a word for female necromancer? [closed]

Question

Is there a word for female necromancer (sorry for repeat of title, but stackexchange complained about lack of body)?

Answer 1

Yes, there is, and it's necromancer. Even OED gives no other form of the word ever having appeared in print in this use.

The adjectival form of -mancy or -mance is -mantic. As that introduces a t, a female form of the word could be plausibly invented, though: necromantrix. Note that this is faux Latin, because the true Latin form of the masculine version would be necromantor. Using -trix here is justifiably deplorable — not least because the necro- part is Greek.

The word has been adopted by a Canadian singer.

Answer 2

If you are writing the story, you can make up one to use ... like necromanseuse or something. (Modeled on dancer -> danseuse)

Answer 3

It depends on just what you mean by necromancer.

It is often used for:

1. One who performs divination by consulting the dead.
2. One who magically raises the dead (often for divination, so overlapping with the previous).
3. Magic-workers generally.

Sorceress and enchantress are female-specific terms within the third definition, as is one sense of hag.

Witch went through a brief period of being treated as usually female, though this is increasingly rare and likely to raise objections today. (If it's a fantasy-fiction use though, I personally as a male witch classify such uses as "things I probably won't have time today to care about either way.")

While voodooisant is often used in English for both sexes, sometimes the female-specific voodooisante is borrowed into English separately. On the other hand, since they've some particularly unfair associations with the second definition of necromancer that might be best avoided.

Circe has rare use as a synecdoche for female magic workers generally, rather than just that individual.