Word of the Day Archive
Wednesday January 12, 2005
eldritch \EL-drich\
, adjective:
Strange; unearthly; weird; eerie.
In the eldritch light of evening in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, the eye plays tricks on the brain.
-- Thom Stark, "Something's Burning", Boardwatch, November 2000
The immitigable mountains and their stark, eldritch trees; coasts where earth abruptly snapped off, never to be continued, or beaches which gnawed it to bright dust and sucked it gently away. . . .
-- Carolyn Kizer, "A Childhood South of Nowhere", New York Times, April 9, 1989
Eldritch perhaps derives from a Middle English word meaning "fairyland," from Middle English elf, "elf" (from Old English aelf) + riche, "kingdom" (from Old English rice).
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for eldritch
