The American Heritage dictionary defines eldritch as:
strange or unearthly; eerie.
The etymology of the word is thought to be from a Middle English word elriche. æl- is an Old English prefix that means strange or other. (The word for foreigner is elþeodig.)The other part is a bit sketchy, but I choose to believe the American Heritage Dictionary because I like it. Anyway, rice means kingdom. One synonym for kingdom is realm, so that gives me a rough translation of eldritch as "strange realm".
For the three of you that haven't tuned out yet, the Old English word for strange is closely related to the word we have nowadays as elf.
Why do I care about this? Well, I am on the search for words that convey eldritch, but in another language. Through the magic of Google Translate to provide a "good enough for gaming" translation, I get some word(s) that might prove very useful.
- Alamaneh (two words in the original language)
- mdaula (again, two words in the original language)
- kinga tanga ke
- Garib D'Yar
Maybe I will only use these as inscriptions on magic items. I will say, though, that I really like Garib D'Yar. It sounds otherworldly to me, even if it sounds a lot like Galeb Duhr. Maybe they can be connected.
Tomorrow morning, I'll have a post about a big project regarding magic for S&W. This post is about a related random idea in an effort to get posting instead of just thinking.
More to follow.