# Wicca

> English word · Proper noun · IPA /ˈwɪkə/ · frequency rank #47,421

## Definitions
1. A neopagan religion that was first popularized by books written in 1949, 1954, and 1959 by the Englishman Gerald Gardner, involving the worship of a horned male god and a moon goddess, the observance of eight Sabbats, and the performance of various rituals.

## Etymology
A twentieth-century borrowing of Old English wiċċa (“male witch”) (from Proto-West Germanic *wikkō (“sorcerer”)) with a spelling pronunciation. The modern use of the term was introduced first as Wica, mentioned briefly in the tenth chapter of Gerald Gardner's book Witchcraft Today (1954), as a collective noun ("the Wica"), allegedly used as a self-designation by practitioners of witchcraft. The spelling Wicca, again as a collective noun, was introduced and popularized by Gerald Gardner's later book, The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959).

## Easily confused with
- **wick** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/wicca-vs-wick)
- **wich** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/wicca-vs-wich)
- **witch** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/wicca-vs-witch)
- **winch** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/wicca-vs-winch)
- **Willa** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/wicca-vs-willa)
- **wince** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/wicca-vs-wince)
- **Wiccan** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/wicca-vs-wiccan)
- **WIC** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/wic-vs-wicca)

## Common misspellings (5)
`iwcca`, `wcica`, `wica`, `wicac`, `wwicca`

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/wicca