adjective
Weird and sinister or ghostly.
‘an eldritch screech’- ‘There was a piercing, petrifying, eldritch screech.’
- ‘The whites beneath her lowered eyes showed as she said this, and for an instant Anest felt as though he spoke, not to his wife, but to a perfect stranger, the purely eldritch creature she had once been.’
- ‘And then she joined hands with the other witch, and eldritch force sizzled through them like a river of blue lightning, and my plans changed on the spot.’
- ‘This random disconnection wouldn't have been too much of a problem had not the ISP used a strange and eldritch log on procedure involving the entry of username and password twice.’
- ‘I need something particularly eldritch, hideous and nameless here.’
- ‘The name suggests something eldritch is in the offing.’
- ‘It pulsed under a huge summer moon that cast eldritch light more revealing than sunbeams, though still far kinder.’
- ‘They were part of a promotional kit for the film and irresistible to a collector of the eldritch and the outré.’
- ‘That is still the case, although there is one demure young lass whose eldritch scream would be enough to frighten even the toughest banshee.’
- ‘And then, for the first time since she had first appeared in Belloc's garden, she began to sing, in a quiet, penetrating, wordless, altogether eldritch voice.’
ghostlike, spectral, phantom, wraithlike, phantasmal, phantasmic, unearthly, unnatural, supernatural, other-worldly, insubstantial, illusory, unreal, shadowy, eerie, weird, uncanny, mysterious, magical, mystic, strange, abnormal, freakish
Origin
Early 16th century (originally Scots): perhaps related to elf.
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