Hex

A word that English took from the German "Hexe", witch. It is used like "curse", often for a smaller one.

A hex is a spell meant to harm or hinder someone. The word is used in much the same way as curse. Some witches make a difference and call a hex the smaller thing, a passing nuisance where a curse is meant to last. There is no agreed rule.

The word is German. Hexe means witch, and hexen means to practise witchcraft. German-speaking settlers brought both to Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century, and from their dialect "hex" passed into American English around 1830, first as a verb, then as a noun for the spell and sometimes for the witch herself. The painted stars and rosettes on the barns of Pennsylvania have been called "hex signs" since the 1920s. Most of the farmers who painted them said they were simply for decoration.

Hexe itself goes back to the Old High German hagazussa. Its first part is probably the word for hedge or fence, which would make the earliest witch of the German language a being that sits on the fence between the farmstead and the wild. Scholars are not agreed on the second part.

As with the curse, this app explains the hex and teaches none.

Related: curse, protection and warding.