revenant

/ˈɹɛvənənt/

Etymology

19th century. From French revenant, the present participle of revenir (“to return”). Compare revenue.

revenant means Returning. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 85 out of 100.

Why this word is great

REVENANT — [Adjective, Noun] A visible ghost or animated corpse that returns from the dead, or one who reappears after a long, often presumed permanent, absence. From the French revenant, the present participle of revenir ("to return"), ultimately from the Latin revenire ("to come back"). Unlike "ghost," which implies an ethereal, disembodied spirit, or "returnee," a bloodless, bureaucratic term, a revenant carries the grave-chill of the soil and the profound disruption of a closed narrative violently reopened. It is the heavy, sodden tread on the stair when the house is meant to be empty; the specific, remembered gait in a crowded street decades later; the familiar face at the window, tapping not with memory but with a cold, solid knuckle. We are haunted not by what has left, but by what insists on coming back—the past refusing to become abstract.

adj

Returning.“On clear nights when the moon was full, she waited for its shining revenant ghost.”

noun

Someone who returns from a long absence.“They would not visit this undesirable revenant with his insolent wealth and discreditable origin.”
A person or thing reborn.“Sometimes […] semi-identifications could be made on the basis of names. Henry VII's son Arthur was hailed as a revenant in this way.”
A supernatural being that returns from the dead; a zombie or ghost.“For granting even that Religion were dead; that it had died, half-centuries ago, with unutterable Dubois; or emigrated lately, to Alsace, with Necklace-Cardinal Rohan; or that it now walked as goblin revenant with Bishop Talleyrand of Autun; yet does not the Shadow of Religion, the Cant of Religion, still linger?”