dullahan
/ˈduː.ləˌhɑːn/noun
dullahan is a noun meaning “A black-clad (usually male) horserider in Irish folklore which carries its severed head like a lantern and may be repelled by gold; when it stops…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled D-U-L-L-A-H-A-N, and it appears about once in every 58 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of dullahan is dullahans.
What does dullahan mean?
noun
- 1
A black-clad (usually male) horserider in Irish folklore which carries its severed head like a lantern and may be repelled by gold; when it stops riding (or calls out someone's name), someone will die. (Also called the Gan Ceann, Irish for "[one] without a head".)
noun
- 1
Alternative letter-case form of dullahan.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce dullahan?
- /ˈduː.ləˌhɑːn/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of dullahan
- dullahans plural
- dullaghan
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is dullahan?
Dullahan appears about once in every 58 million words in written English, the 237,177th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does dullahan come from?
From Irish dulachán, from dubh (“black”) + another word (compare lucharachán (“elf, dwarf”)), possibly originally a term for a dark or sullen person (compare the surname Dullahan) and only subsequently applied to the spirit.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).