Word of the Week! Eldritch Richmond Writing

Word of the Week! Eldritch Richmond Writing How can a word that appears to be about the supernatural or ancient describe a manikin in a roadster, floating around planet Earth? Wait for it Thanks to Writing Consultant Jennifer Cottle for this word, one she nominated while a student in my Eng. 215 class as we read the works of H.P. Lovecraft. The Providence fantasist used it a great deal, usually when describing old books of magic as eldritch tomes or things associated with the supernatural, as in The Dunwich Horror, where the mountainous blasphemy lumbered upon its eldritch course. Incidentally, if you think Lovecraft overused one of his favorite adjectives, it only appears once in that tale, as well as once in another personal favorite, The Haunter of the Dark, where I had been sure he used it on every other page. While casting about for more examples, I recalled that the author referred to eldritch landscapes as well as objects or monsters. Over the years I had come to think of eldritch things as being ancient. My Lovecraftian-looking Websters New Collegiate notes a Scottish origin and a definition of eerie, whereas my more recent American Heritage Dictionary notes perhaps a Middle English word elriche as an ancestor. That dictionary adds the notion of unearthly to our Word of the Week. The Oxford English Dictionary Online does not solve the riddle of the terms etymology, as it lists both elriche and eldritch in 16th century usages, both with the sense of things not of this earth.   If the two words are merely variants of the same term, eldritch carried the day. It also came to be used in describing strange places. By the 19th Century, American realist William Dean Howells writes of a Joy that had something eldritch and unearthly in it. Redundant? Howells apparently saw some distinction between something unearthly and the truly eldritch, and I find his association with joy original and appealing. What I do not see, in any usage, is the sense of something old, as when Lovecraft describes moldering books or mossy ruins of another time. So like the term itself, theres mystery in the exact meaning of eldritch. Its a lovely word that trips off the tongue. I guess players of DD and readers of fantasy novels have kept it alive for us. We can also tip our space-helmets to Elon Musk. This weeks launch of the Starman manikin, seated behind the wheel of a cherry-red roadster, had me mesmerized. It looked literally unearthly, as it embarked on an endless trip around the sun. We can call this high-technology moment, eerie in its cosmic loneliness, an eldritch event. Nominate a word by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below. See all of our Words of the Week here.