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Awarlock is a male practitioner ofwitchcraft.[1]
The most commonly accepted etymology deriveswarlock from theOld Englishwǣrloga, which meant "breaker of oaths" or "deceiver".[2] The term came to apply specially to thedevil around 1000 AD.[3] In early modernScots, the word came to refer to the male equivalent of a "witch" (which can be male or female, but has historically been used predominantly for females).[4][page needed] The term may have become associated in Scotland with male witches owing to the idea that they had made pacts with Auld Hornie (the devil) and thus had betrayed the Christian faith and broken their baptismal vows or oaths.[5] From this use, the word passed intoRomantic literature and ultimately into 20th-century popular culture. A derivation from theOld Norsevarð-lokkur, "caller of spirits", has also been suggested,[6][7][8] but theOxford English Dictionary considers this implausible owing to the extreme rarity of the Norse word and because forms without hard-k, which are consistent with the Old English etymology ("traitor"), are attested earlier than forms with a-k.[2]
Although most victims of thewitch trials in early modern Scotland were women, some men were executed as warlocks.[9][10][11]
In his day, the Scottish mathematicianJohn Napier (1550–1617) was often perceived as a warlock or magician because of his interests in divination and the occult, though his establishment position likely kept him from being prosecuted.[12][13]
ON. varðlokkur wk. fem. pl. ... incantation, suggested already in Johnson, is too rare (? occurring once), with regard to the late appearance of the -k forms, to be considered.
It is possible that it became associated with wizards and male witches in Scotland in the sense that someone who made a pact with Auld Hornie had betrayed the Christian faith and broken their baptismal vows. In that respect they were considered to be an 'oath breaker', a traitor and an enemy of the Church.
'Vardlokkur' […] is related to the Scots dialect word 'warlock', wizard, and the meaning is thought to relate to the power to shut in or enclose"