Other forms: amulets
An amulet is a small object you wear or carry to keep harm away. A blue glass eye on a cord, a saint's medal tucked under a shirt, a stone with a hole through it kept in a coat pocket.
An amulet is always an object, never a spell or a prayer — you can hold it in your hand. It works by defence: an amulet guards you from illness, bad luck or the evil eye, while a talisman is meant to bring you something good. Museum labels use the word constantly for Egyptian scarabs and Roman pendants, and fantasy stories lean on it hard. The word takes a preposition you should copy: an amulet against drowning, an amulet against fever. Say it a-mew-let, with the stress at the front.
1nounamuletA small object worn or carried to protect its owner from harm, illness or bad luck.
“Sailors wore an amulet of carved bone as protection against drowning.”
amulet is a protective charm.
Amulet reached English through Middle French amulette, from Latin amuletum. Where the Latin word itself came from, nobody can say — the trail stops there. A word for an object that works by mystery, with a mysterious past of its own.
Latin
amuletum
Middle French
amulette
English, today
amulet
From Middle French amulette, from Latin amuletum.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA