dracula
n. countablen. a famous vampire from a classic horror story who drinks blood and lives in a castle. People often use the name to describe any scary or mysterious vampire character.
n. the titular vampire protagonist of Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel, often used as the archetypal figure for modern vampire fiction. Sometimes used in lowercase to describe a person or character displaying vampiric traits.
He dressed up as Dracula for the Halloween party.
The old mansion on the hill looked so spooky that the local children joked Dracula lived there.
Stoker's Dracula transformed the vampire from a mindless folkloric monster into a sophisticated, aristocratic predator that continues to haunt the collective imagination of Western literature.
From the name Vlad III Dracula (also known as Vlad Țepeș (“Vlad the Impaler”)), from the name of his father Vlad II Dracul, who was given the name Dracul by the Order of the Dragon. Dracul (literally “the Devil”) comes from the Romanian drac (“devil”), itself deriving from the Latin dracō (“dragon”).
Capitalised when referring to the specific literary character; lowercase or used with an article when referring to a person resembling him.