hoodoo

Apparently an alteration of voodoo.

• IPA^(key): /ˈhuːduː/

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

hoodoo (countable and uncountable, plural hoodoos)

1. (uncountable) A set of spiritual practices and traditions created and concealed from slave-owners by enslaved Africans in North America, based on traditional African beliefs.
2. (chiefly US) A practitioner of voodoo.
3. (chiefly US) Supernatural bad luck, or something or someone believed to bring bad luck.
   • 1931, Ion L. Idriess, Lasseter's Last Ride, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 60:

     The three men wondered whether they would find Colson at Taylor's Creek. They felt that a hoodoo hung over the place.

4. (geology) A tall thin spire of rock that protrudes from the bottom of arid basins and badlands.
   • 2013, Philipp Meyer, The Son, Simon & Schuster, published 2014, page 71:

     It was even larger than the mirage made it look—a dozen miles across and a thousand feet deep, with fins and towers and hoodoos like observation posts, mesas and minor buttes, springs flowing brightly in the red rock.

   • 2018 July 17, Autumn Spanne, “Check out these crazy rock formations across the United States”, in CNN‎^[1]:

     This park’s strange and beautiful rock formations were formed by the Yellowstone River and various streams that have cut through the rock over millions of years, carving out hoodoos, spires and caprocks. The name Makoshika comes from a Lakota word for badlands.

• (spire of rock): tent rock, fairy chimney, earth pyramid

hoodoo (third-person singular simple present hoodoos, present participle hoodooing, simple past and past participle hoodooed)

1. (transitive) To jinx; to bring bad luck or misfortune to.

• “hoodoo”, Bill Casselman