medicine man

1. A male shaman or shamanistic healer, especially among Native American peoples.

2. A hawker of nostrums among the audience in a medicine show.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

medicine man

(Anthropology & Ethnology) (among certain peoples, esp North American Indians) a person believed to have supernatural powers of healing; a magician or sorcerer

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

med′icine man`

a person believed to possess magical powers, esp. among North American Indians; shaman.

[1795–1805]

medicine man

Also called a shaman, this is someone with magic powers resulting from contact with the supernatural. Common in the religion of the Inuits, Maoris, Mongolians, Polynesians and Native Americans.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

medicine man - a Native American shaman

rainmaker - American Indian medicine man who attempt to make it rain

priest-doctor, shaman - in societies practicing shamanism: one acting as a medium between the visible and spirit worlds; practices sorcery for healing or divination

Translations

medicine man

n → stregone m

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

medicine man

n. curandero.

English-Spanish Medical Dictionary © Farlex 2012

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

"If we keep friends with them," said he, "we have nothing to fear from the Blackfeet, and can rule the mountains." Arapooish pretended to be a great "medicine man", a character among the Indians which is a compound of priest, doctor, prophet, and conjurer.

View in context

Gentlemen, a metaphysician is a medicine man. The difference between you and the Eskimo who makes a fur-clad blubber-eating god is merely a difference of several thousand years of ascertained facts.

View in context

Likewise is there a white man's medicine man, what you call missionary.

View in context

"All right, you Haeckelites, I may reason like a medicine man, but, pray, how do you reason?

View in context

Ngurn, whom Bassett was to know afterward as the devil-devil doctor, priest, or medicine man of the village, had wanted his head.

View in context

The little communities, still haunted by ten thousand memories of a greater state, gathered and developed almost tacitly a customary law and fell under the guidance of a medicine man or a priest.

View in context

Only Yuma the Medicine Man sees Arlyn for who and what she is.

Arlyn And The Purloin Bane

Reportedly developed by a medicine man whose ingredients were considered a "fountain of youth," 505 Southwestern's organic salsa (3 pack of 10-ounce bottles for $20.95) provides a low-carbohydrate, low-sodium way to gorge without the guilt.

Hot fun in the summertime

Crusoe to steal the valuable kadaicha boots once worn by a medicine man. An overly simplistic resolution reveals the root of Marie-Claire's emotional problems and finds PJ willing to resurrect the friendship, this time on honest terms.

Murray, Kirsty. Walking home with Marie-Claire

Exhibitions this year include: Museum of the Mind: Art and Memory in World Cultures, until September 7 and Medicine Man: The Forgotten Museum of Henry Wellcome.

GO: ART: BRUSH STROKES

MEDICINE MAN: John Taylor at the flower show and, right, Deborah Fell and Sarah Wozmak from Formby get into the spirit of things Pictures: JOHN DALY and COLIN LANE

A REAL SAGE; Herb doctor John reveals remedies

Out on a Montana Indian reservation, a medicine man directs a Sun Dance ceremony.

Be Warned - Trespassing on First Nations' Spirituality