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A vampire is a being from folklore who subsists by feeding on the life essence (generally in the form of blood) of living creatures. Undead beings, vampires often visited loved ones and caused mischief or deaths in the neighbourhoods they inhabited when they were alive. They wore shrouds and were often described as bloated and of ruddy or dark countenance, markedly different from today's gaunt, pale vampire which dates from the early 19th century. Although vampiric entities have been recorded in most cultures, the term ''vampire'' was not popularized in the west until the early 18th century, after an influx of vampire superstition into Western Europe from areas where vampire legends were frequent, such as the Balkans and Eastern Europe,〔Silver & Ursini, ''The Vampire Film'', pp. 22-23.〕 although local variants were also known by different names, such as ''vrykolakas'' in Greece and ''strigoi'' in Romania. This increased level of vampire superstition in Europe led to what can only be called mass hysteria and in some cases resulted in corpses actually being staked and people being accused of vampirism. In modern times, however, the vampire is generally held to be a fictitious entity, although belief in similar vampiric creatures such as the ''chupacabra'' still persists in some cultures. Early folk belief in vampires has sometimes been ascribed to the ignorance of the body's process of decomposition after death and how people in pre-industrial societies tried to rationalise this, creating the figure of the vampire to explain the mysteries of death. Porphyria was also linked with legends of vampirism in 1985 and received much media exposure, but has since been largely discredited. The charismatic and sophisticated vampire of modern fiction was born in 1819 with the publication of ''The Vampyre'' by John Polidori; the story was highly successful and arguably the most influential vampire work of the early 19th century.〔Silver & Ursini, ''The Vampire Film'', pp. 37-38.〕 However, it is Bram Stoker's 1897 novel ''Dracula'' which is remembered as the quintessential vampire novel and provided the basis of the modern vampire legend. The success of this book spawned a distinctive vampire genre, still popular in the 21st century, with books, films, and television shows. The vampire has since become a dominant figure in the horror genre. == Etymology == The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' dates the first appearance of the English word ''vampire'' (as ''vampyre'') in English from 1734, in a travelogue titled ''Travels of Three English Gentlemen'' published in ''The Harleian Miscellany'' in 1745. Vampires had already been discussed in French〔Vermeir, K. (2012). Vampires as Creatures of the Imagination: Theories of Body, Soul, and Imagination in Early Modern Vampire Tracts (1659–1755). In Y. Haskell (Ed.), Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers.〕 and German literature.〔 After Austria gained control of northern Serbia and Oltenia with the Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718, officials noted the local practice of exhuming bodies and "killing vampires".〔 These reports, prepared between 1725 and 1732, received widespread publicity.〔Barber, p. 5.〕 The English term was derived (possibly via French ''vampyre'') from the German ''Vampir'', in turn derived in the early 18th century from the Serbian вампир/''vampir'',〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher=Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé )〕 when Arnold Paole, a purported vampire in Serbia was described during the time when Northern Serbia was part of the Austrian Empire. The Serbian form has parallels in virtually all Slavic languages: Bulgarian and Macedonian вампир (''vampir''), Bosnian: ''lampir'', Croatian ''vampir'', Czech and Slovak ''upír'', Polish ''wąpierz'', and (perhaps East Slavic-influenced) ''upiór'', Ukrainian упир (''upyr''), Russian упырь (''upyr''), Belarusian упыр (''upyr''), from Old East Slavic упирь (''upir'') (note that many of these languages have also borrowed forms such as "vampir/wampir" subsequently from the West; these are distinct from the original local words for the creature). The exact etymology is unclear.〔 ("Myths of the Peoples of the World"). Upyr'〕 Among the proposed proto-Slavic forms are *(unicode:ǫpyrь) and *(unicode:ǫpirь).〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Russian Etymological Dictionary by Max Vasmer )〕 Another, less widespread theory, is that the Slavic languages have borrowed the word from a Turkic term for "witch" (e.g., Tatar ''ubyr'').〔〔Mladenov, Stefan (1941). Etimologičeski i pravopisen rečnik na bǎlgarskiya knižoven ezik.〕 Czech linguist Václav Machek proposes Slovak verb "vrepiť sa" (stick to, thrust into), or its hypothetical anagram "vperiť sa" (in Czech, archaic verb "vpeřit" means "to thrust violently") as an etymological background, and thus translates "upír" as "someone who thrusts, bites".〔MACHEK, V.: Etymologický slovník jazyka českého, 5th edition, NLN, Praha 2010〕 An early use of the Old Russian word is in the anti-pagan treatise "Word of Saint Grigoriy" (Russian ''Слово святого Григория''), dated variously to the 11th–13th centuries, where pagan worship of ''upyri'' is reported.〔(【引用サイトリンク】script-title=ru:Рыбаков Б.А. Язычество древних славян / М.: Издательство 'Наука,' 1981 г. )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Vampire」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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