Hex is a curse or spell intended to bring bad luck or harm to someone. In stories about witches and wizards, a hex might make someone's hair turn green or cause them to trip over their own feet. The word comes from a German word related to witchcraft, and people used to take hexes very seriously, believing that certain symbols or words could actually cause misfortune.

Today, most people don't literally believe in magical hexes, but the word survives in our language. Someone might joke that their computer is hexed when it keeps crashing, or say a sports team seems hexed when they keep losing in unlikely ways. A jinx is similar to a hex but usually refers to simpler bad luck rather than an intentional curse.

The word also appears in hexagon, a six-sided shape. As a verb, to hex someone means to put a curse on them in stories or legends.