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Wednesday January 12, 2005

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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

 

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