witch [OE] In Anglo-Saxon times witches were of both sexes. The masculine form was wicca, which is the source of wicked, and has also been revived in recent times by modern pagans as the name of their religion, Wicca. A female witch was a wicce (pronounced with a ‘ch’ at the end). A male witch would now be called a wizard [LME], a word that comes from *wise—in the Middle Ages wizards were wise men or sages, only becoming magicians in the mid 16th century. See also warlock. The witching hour is midnight, the time when witches are active. The phrase is from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Hamlet himself declares: ‘Tis now the very witching time of night, / When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out / Contagion to this world.’ George Orwell was the first to use witch-hunt to mean ‘a campaign directed at people holding views considered unorthodox or a threat to society’, in reference to Communists being persecuted in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). Before that a witch-hunt was a real hunt for witches, though the term is recorded first in novels from the 19th century, long after witches had stopped being burned at the stake.