succuba means A female demon or fiend; a succubus. It carries an Arena rating of 1417, earned across 19 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, succuba ranks #200 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #382 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #1,005 of 17,105 for Most Storied Words, #1,759 of 17,142 for Most Ingenious Words.
Why “succuba” is a great word
A female demon believed to descend upon sleeping men to engage in sexual intercourse. The term originates in the Latin *succuba* ('paramour, mistress'), from *succubāre* ('to lie under'), from *sub-* ('under') + *cubāre* ('to lie down'). Unlike the male 'incubus,' which lies *upon* its victims, or a human 'paramour,' whose transgressions are merely mortal, the succuba is a supernatural violation from beneath. She is the cold weight on the chest in the dead of night, the whispered breath that is not one's own, the shameful dream that leaves an inexplicable fatigue at dawn—the ancient, personified terror of the vulnerable self, invaded in its most private solitude.
Etymology
From Latin succuba, from succubō (“to lie under”).
noun
- A female demon or fiend; a succubus.e.g.“a. 1610, The Mirror for Magistrates
Though seeming in shape a woman natural / Was a fiend of the kind that succubae some call.”
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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