eldritch — English Dictionary

Adjective

1. Unearthly, supernatural, eerie, preternatural.

   Examples

   So Maggie runs, the witches follow, / Wi' mony an eldritch ſkreech and hollow.

   I look'd upon the rotting Sea, / And drew my eyes away; / I look'd upon the eldritch deck / And there the dead men lay.

   More examples (7)

   Pearl, in utter scorn of her mother's attempt to quiet her, gave an eldritch scream, and then became silent.

   And the woman, whose voice had risen to a kind of eldritch sing-song, turned with a skip, and was gone.

   The thing advanced to the table. The bright flame of the slush lamp caught its eye. It was amused, and gave voice to eldritch cackles which betokened mirth.

   Surprise, horror, loathing were depicted on all faces while he eyed them with a ghostly grin. I anticipated some such reception, he began with an eldritch laugh, for which, it seems, history is to blame.

   The Scandinavian Eddas and Sagas thunder with cosmic horror, and shake with the stark fear of Ymir and his shapeless spawn; whilst our own Anglo-Saxon Beowulf and the later Continental Nibelung tales are full of eldritch weirdness.

   The large vessel's dark form was massive, eldritch, as it loomed off the Cushing's port bow in the flash-lit darkness. This was the Hiei. The recognition of the battleship spread down the van, from the Cushing to the Laffey to the Sterett to the O'Bannon.

   But in 2022, he agreed to a cameo in one: Mr. Spielberg’s autobiographical feature “The Fabelmans,” where the enigmatic if not eldritch Mr. Lynch was cast as John Ford, the maker of westerns and the grand old curmudgeon of American cinema. It was a sentimental gesture that one can only call Lynchian.

Adjective

1. suggesting the operation of supernatural influences

   Synonyms

   weirduncannyunearthly

   Examples

   an eldritch screech

   the three weird sisters

   More examples (1)

   an unearthly light