1873 Longfellow Wayside Inn iii.Interl. v. 4The were-wolf is a legend old, But the were-ass is something new.
1883 J. F. M'Lennan in Encycl. Brit. XV. 90The Arcadians, or bear⁓tribe, sprang from the were-bear Callisto.
Ibid. ,In Ashango⁓land,..a were-leopard was..charged with murder and metamorphosis.
1894 Sat. Rev. 15 Sept. 289/2The simple explanation..that that beast was a were-calf.
1897 Sir H. H. Johnston Brit. Centr.Afr. 439In this respect the belief in ‘were’ animals..is nearly universal.
1967 L. Deuel Conquistadors without Swords xviii. 235Today,..more than 400 years after the Spanish Conquest and 2,000..years since its origin, the were-jaguar, the nawal, is still invoked to frighten children who will not go to sleep.
1967 E. P. Benson Maya World ii. 24Olmec art is full of creatures who are part human and part feline... Often they are a combination of human infant and jaguar. They are called ‘were-jaguars’.
1979 E. Abrams tr. H. Stierlin's Precolombian Civilizations 68This werejaguar figure tenoned into the wall of the pyramid at Chaví n.
ORIGIN: from werewolf
were-
Prefix
- man; prefix most commonly used with animal names to indicate a person who changes shape into that animal.
Etymology
Back-formation from werewolf (“man-wolf”), from Old English werwulf, derived from wer (“man”), from Proto-Indo-European *wiHrós (“man”) + wulf (“wolf”).
Derived terms
English words prefixed with were-