Word for the Day

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
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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, akin to G. reich).
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