What Does “Revenant” Mean? What You Need To Know About Leonardo DiCaprio’s Film

Yes, it’s the movie that won all the Golden Globes 2016 last night but what exactly is a “revenant?”

A “revenant” is is a visible ghost or animated corpse that was believed to return from the grave to terrorize the living. The word “revenant” is derived from the Latin word, reveniens, which means “returning.”

It can be tricky to publicize a movie whose title the viewers don’t understand, but Twentieth Century Fox quickly handled that with their movie poster explaining the word. One Twitter user tweeted the poster and captioned it: “This poster got me real concerned the whole title was THE REVENANT (N. ONE WHO HAS RETURNED, AS IF FROM THE DEAD)

This poster got me real concerned the whole title was THE REVENANT (N. ONE WHO HAS RETURNED, AS IF FROM THE DEAD) pic.twitter.com/3YS1m6Damm

— Matthew Mueller (@aManAboutFilm) December 2, 2015

The title is fitting if you understand the premise of the movie. The Revenant follows a character who survives a bear attack and “comes back to life” for revenge but not on the bear, on his fellow fur trapper who left him for dead.

According to Nancy Mandeville Caciola, an associate professor of history at the University of California at San Diego and one of the world’s leading experts on the history of “revenant,” explains that these theories first appeared in medieval times. People physically died and then got up from their graves in their full form.

“A revenant,” she told The Washington Post, is “a corpse that comes back to life,” meaning death preceded it.

The award-winning movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, is in theaters now.