Definition of "Nosferatu"

"Friend Arthur, if you had met that kiss [...] you would in time, when you had died, have become nosferatu, as they call it in Eastern Europe, and would all time make more of those Un-Deads that so have filled us with horror."

1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula, published 1993, page 192

Those of us who have dabbled much in the lore of the nosferatu tend to think of them as imaginative creations of the German and English Romantics, and not without reason.

2018 November, Kevin Jackson, “Something to Sink Your Teeth Into”, in Literary Review

While it may have been capable of flight, it almost certainly spent its time on Hateg crawling about on its wrists, with its great leathery wings folded over its body like a shroud. A gigantic kind of Nosferatu comes to mind.

2018, Tim Flannery, Europe: A Natural History, page 26