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witchcraft act n. chiefly historical any of various pieces of legislation relating to the practise of witchcraft, esp. when this is regarded as a crime (often with capital initials when denoting a specific act).In British history the term is used to refer to the parliamentary acts of the 16th and 17th centuries which declared witchcraft to be a crime, but is also applied to the later acts repealing these, esp. the Witchcraft Act of 1735 that made it illegal to claim a person was a witch. In places where belief in witchcraft is still current, ‘witchcraft acts’ are usually intended to protect those accused of witchcraft.