The thing cannot be described--there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force and cosmic order.
- From "The Call of Cthulhu" by H. P. Lovecraft, 1926
Our connections to words often come from the first story in which we encountered them, and this is especially true if the word is uncommon or unusual. The early 20th Century horror writer Howard Philips Lovecraft had a unique vocabulary, making his writings a treasure trove of fascinating words. Indeed, the easiest way to recognize Lovecraft (or another writer aping Lovecraft) is from the vocabulary; the moon will be gibbous, the ruins cyclopean, and the terrible cosmic horrors will inevitably be eldritch.
According to the AHD, eldritch means "strange or unearthly; eerie." It comes from the Old English "el-", meaning strange or other, and "rice" meaning realm. Unlike many words of Old English descent, it does not appear in Litterature until (according to the OED) 1508, in the form "elrich." The d seems to be a case of excrescence, first appearing in 1789. Because of its late appearance in extant litterature, the AHD can only hypothesize the Middle English form "elriche." In any event, if the word did indeed pass through Middle English, it was relatively unaffected by French.
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Okay, this is a little weird, Matt. Last week you & I happened to post the same word. This week you posted a word which I *almost* posted. For me, "eldritch" is an Angela Carter word, since that's where I remember first coming across it, and she seems to like it quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteOh man,
ReplyDeleteso I'm reading The Bloody Chamber, right? for a class, and I come accross the word "eldritch".
"The first grey streamers of the dawn now flew in the sky and an eldritch half-light seeped into the railway carriage."
I remember this post, and I remember the preceding comment; and I think to myself, "this would be an impossible coincidence. No way."
Yes way.
The Bloody Chamber, by Angela Carter
--miracles happen, once in a while.