banshee

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The Word of the Day for March 17 is:

banshee   \BAN-shee\   noun
     : a female spirit in Gaelic folklore whose appearance or 
wailing warns a family that one of them will soon die

Example sentence:
     My Irish grandmother claimed to have heard a banshee 
wailing outside her bedroom window just two days before my 
grandfather died.

Did you know?
     In Irish folklore, a "bean sidhe" (literally "woman of 
fairyland") was not a welcome guest. When she was seen combing 
her hair or heard wailing beneath a window, it was considered a 
sign that a family member was about to die. English speakers 
modified the mournful fairy's Irish name into the modern 
word "banshee" -- a term we now most often use to evoke her 
woeful or terrible or earsplitting cry, as in "to scream like a 
banshee," or attributively, "a banshee wail."