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The word duende refers to a spirit in Spanish, Portuguese, and Filipino folklore and literally means "ghost" or "goblin" in Spanish. It is believed to derive from the phrase dueño de casa, which means "owner of a house." The term is traditionally used in flamenco music or other art forms to refer to the mystical or powerful force given off by a performer to draw in the audience. The Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca wrote in his essay "Teoria y Juego del Duende" ("Play and Theory of the Duende") that duende "is a power and not a behavior … a struggle and not a concept." Nowadays the term appears in a broader range of contexts to refer to one's unspoken charm or allure.
Examples of duende in a Sentence
Matthew Carey, Deadline, 28 Aug. 2025
The duende is a force not a labor, a struggle not a thought.
—Lauren Groff, New York Times, 17 Oct. 2024
May more absolute crackpots come forward with their petrified duendes and brujas voladoras.
—Alex Zaragoza, Los Angeles Times, 15 Sep. 2023
The writer George Frazier spent a lifetime defining duende and identifying those who possessed it.
—Paul Daugherty, The Enquirer, 3 Sep. 2021
Which means that, for a dancer, duende is not only a mystical inspiration.
—Jennifer Homans, The New Yorker, 30 Dec. 2019
Krug is no Orr, because no one can recreate that time, that talent that duende, but the winning rush was of near-No.
—BostonGlobe.com, 23 Nov. 2019
Cite this Entry
“Duende.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/duende. Accessed 10 Sep. 2025.
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