L A witch inhabiting the water.
1680. Butler, Rem. (1759), I. 77. A Water-witch with Charms Could sink their Men of War, as easy as Storms.
1877. Black, Green Past., xxxvii. (1878), 297. Presently we found ourselves in a sort of water-witches’ paradise. Far below us boiled that hell-cauldron of white smoke [etc.].
2. a. U.S. A name for several water-birds noted for their quickness in diving: see quots.
1789. Morse, Amer. Geog. (1792), 60. Water-witch.
1859. Bartlett, Dict. Amer. (ed. 2), Dipper, a small aquatic bird, common throughout the United States, also called the Water-witch and Hell-diver.
1862. Coues & Prentiss, in Rep. Smithsonian Inst., 1861, 419. Podiceps cristatus … Crested Grebe. ‘Water Witch.’ Ibid. Podilymbus podiceps … ‘Dipper.’ ‘Water Witch.’
1899. C. B. Cory, Birds E. North Amer., I. 132. Colymbus auritus Linn. Horned Grebe. Water Witch.
b. The stormy petrel, Procellaria pelagica.
1852. Macgillivray, Brit. Birds, V. 460.
3. U.S. = WATER-FINDER.
1859. Bartlett, Dict. Amer. (ed. 2), Water-Witch. A person who pretends to have the power of discovering subterranean springs by means of the divining rod.
1883. Phil Robinson, in Harper’s Mag., Oct., 708/2. Utah itself abounds in ‘water-witches’ of varying degrees of local celebrity.
1890. L. C. d’Oyle, Notches, 154. His men had reached a depth of about a hundred and thirty feet without striking water, when there chanced to come along a man known throughout the section as a ‘water-witch.’
