Dictionary

horcrux en · NOUN

Etymology

Coined by author J. K. Rowling apparently at random; "invent[ed] […] after much transposition of syllables". Fans have pointed to the possible influence of Middle English hore (“iniquity, evil, sin”) and English crux (“the central or essential part”), or Turkish hortlak (“ghost”) among other theories. The term first appears in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005).

Meanings

1. In Harry Potter, an object in which a wizard has concealed a part of their soul through magic, rendering them immortal until the object is irreparably damaged or destroyed.
   • They stared at it as if it was the one ring or the holy grail or a horcrux, or perhaps all of them rolled into one. An empty, plastic cat food bowl. 2013, Adam Rawlins, The Strange Encounter of Sally Shakespeare and Toby Tinker, page 24:
   • They were standard fit, vintage wash, pretty expensive, and I showed them to him and I said, “These are yours if you want them.” And do you know what he did? He actually flinched. Like these were haunted pants or something. Like these were Horcrux jeans with a piece of Lord Voldemort’s soul in them. 2013, Teddy Steinkellner, Trash Can Days: A Middle School Saga, page 20:
   • Again, he didn’t say anything and she asked him about the arrowhead—was it his Horcrux or something? was there a piece of his soul trapped inside it?—and he shrugged it off. 2016, Joe Halstead, West Virginia, page 38:
2. (broadly) Something in which one has invested a part of one's self; an object which allows for the preservation of memory, culture, etc.
   • And I loved the way they looked, all those journals lined up on a single bookshelf in my room, carving a path through time that you could follow, like a trail of bread crumbs, from that first day in Dr. Milton’s office right up to the present. It was as if I’d archived myself inside them—my own private horcruxes. 2016, Tommy Wallach, Thanks for the Trouble, Simon & Schuster, →ISBN:
   • When I read manuscripts, I feel very aware that some part of the writer's soul lives in the pages—like a good Horcrux, say—and if I’m turning one down, I need to do so with thoughtfulness and respect. 2016, Cheryl B. Klein, The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults, page 338:
   • Via nostalgia and sentimentality, objects act for humans as unwitting mnemonic horcruxes (my analogy, not Schwenger’s), storing parts of our memories inside themselves for our later involuntary retrieval. 2021, Curt Cloninger, Some Ways of Making Nothing: Apophatic Apparatuses in Contemporary Art, page 383:

Forms

Synonyms

phylactery

Translations (9)

ru окая́нт (item in Harry Potter books) · tr hortkuluk (item in Harry Potter books) · cs viteál (item in Harry Potter books) · fi hirnyrkki (item in Harry Potter books) · nl gruzielement (item in Harry Potter books) · is helkross (item in Harry Potter books) · pl horkruks (item in Harry Potter books) · vi trường sinh linh giá (item in Harry Potter books) · ru крестра́ж (item in Harry Potter books)

wikipedia: horcrux · wikipedia: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince