revenir

The French word revenant is the present participle of revenir, 'to come back,' from Latin revenire (re- 'back' + venire 'to come'). A revenant is literally 'one who returns.' In medieval French, the word was used for the dead who returned to the living — not as insubstantial ghosts but as physical, corporeal beings. The revenant had a body. It could knock on doors, sit at tables, and terrify the living with its solid presence.

The distinction between a revenant and a ghost matters. A ghost (from Old English gast, 'spirit') is immaterial — it passes through walls and cannot be touched. A revenant has flesh, weight, and purpose. Medieval chronicles are full of revenant stories. William of Newburgh, writing around 1196, recorded multiple cases of the dead returning in bodily form in northern England. The revenants were often recently deceased men who were wicked in life and restless in death.

The revenant tradition influenced the development of the vampire myth. Eastern European vampire stories — the strigoi of Romania, the vrykolakas of Greece — describe corporeal dead who return to feed on the living. The revenant is the older, broader category: any dead person who comes back in the body. The vampire is a specialized subcategory with dietary preferences.

English borrowed revenant from French by the early 1800s, initially as a literary word. It remained more common in French than in English until the 21st century, when the 2015 film The Revenant (about frontiersman Hugh Glass surviving a bear attack and returning for revenge) gave the word mainstream recognition. Glass was not dead, but the title worked: a revenant is someone who comes back when they shouldn't be able to.