Wordcount for Lovecraft’s Favorite Words
February 23rd, 2011 · 76 CommentsUpdate: The free eBook of Lovecraft’s Complete Works is done and can be downloaded here. This post was updated 6/23/2011 with requests from the comments which had a significant number of instances (generally over 10, but sometimes fewer for odd & Lovecraftian words).
One of the things any fan of Lovecraft discovers early on is that Lovecraft was very attached to certain words. We either laugh or groan every time we hear something described as “indescribable” or called “unnamable” or “antiquarian” or “cyclopean.” And sometimes we wonder how many times he actually used the words.
In working on the Lovecraft ebook project (which is nearly complete and is in final proofreading), I compiled all of Lovecraft’s original works in one file. So I took suggestions for words to count on the H.P. Podcraft forums and on Twitter.
The list is below. The only big surprises were “squamous,” which only appears once in an original story—”The Dunwich Horror”—, and “unutterable,” which only appeared 13 times.
Abnormal – 94
Accursed – 76
Amorphous – 19
Antediluvian – 10
Antiqu (e/arian) – 128
Blasphem (y/ous) – 92
Cat – 46 (whole word search)
Charnel – 20
Comprehension – 9
Cyclopean – 47
Dank – 19
Decadent – 32
Daemoniac – 55
Effulgence – 4
Eldritch – 23
Faint (ed/ing) – 189
Foetid – 22
Fungus/Fungoid/Fungous – 54
Furtive – 60
Gambrel – 21
Gibbous – 9
Gibber (ed/ing) – 10
Hideous – 260
Immemorial – 25
Indescribable – 25
Iridescence – 2
Loath (ing/some) – 71
Lurk – 15
Madness – 115
Manuscript – 35
Mortal – 27
Nameless – 157
Noisome – 33
Non-Euclidean – 2
Proportion/Disproportionate – 53
Shunned – 54
Singular (ly) – 115
Spectral – 60
Squamous – 1
Stench – 59
Stygian – 6
Swarthy – 14
Tenebrous – 9
Tentacle(s) – 28
Ululat (e/ing) – 4
Unmentionable – 16
Unnamable – 22
Unutterable – 13
At a commenter’s request, I ran the names of some of the god/great old ones/other eldritch beings:
Gods, Great Old Olds, and other Eldritch Beings
Azathoth – 22
Cthulhu – 42
Dagon – 16
Nodens – 8
Nyarlathotep – 47
Shoggoth – 22
Shub-Niggurath – 8
Yog-Sothoth – 28
And in answer to another request:
Eldritch Tomes, Things and Locations
Tomes
Necronomicon – 49
Pnakotic Manuscripts – 16
De Vermis Mysteriis – 2
Book of Eibon – 3
Eltdown Shards – 1
Nameless Cults (Unaussprechlichen Kulten) – 4
Things
Elder Sign – 2
Locations
Arkham – 159
Dunwich – 41
Innsmouth – 104
Kadath – 67
Kingsport – 43
Leng – 158
Miskatonic – 62
R’lyeh – 16
Yuggoth – 21
Irem – 12
And someone requested a Wordle….so here it is!
(click to view larger) Thanks to the lovely commenter who pointed out Wordle’s advanced function. I really haven’t used it, so I wasn’t able to make the best use of it. This new Wordle is much better.
Got another word for me to check in the file? Leave it in the comments or ask me on Twitter and I’ll add it for you!
February 23rd, 2011 at 10:39 am
I’d be interested in a breakdown of the gods: Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, etc.
February 23rd, 2011 at 12:40 pm
Could you check some eldritch tomes’ names?
I regularly write Mythos fiction and that would be a great help for me … and also sate my thirst for forbidden lore!
Hahah
My top suggestions are Necronomicon, Pnakotic Manuscritps, De Vermis Mysteriis, Book of Eibon, Eltdown Shards, Nameless Cults (Unaussprechlichen Kulten).
I suggest also a counting on strange places: Yuggoth, R’lyeh, Kadath, Leng …
[Edited to update! - Ruth]
February 23rd, 2011 at 1:26 pm
Marvelous post! this will help many of us in our dark researches.
February 23rd, 2011 at 10:41 pm
I love this list. Very surprised to see Nyarlathotep got the most mentions–I always thought he was one of the least-represented beings. It would be cool to add Bloch, Derlaith, etc but then that would get into what is “canon” and what is not.
February 23rd, 2011 at 10:47 pm
@Ahimsa I think it’s because Nyarlathotep is a rather major player in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of his mentions were there. Then he’s got a story named after him, though I didn’t include the story’s title in the word count.
February 23rd, 2011 at 11:09 pm
I’ll bet 30 of those 32 instances of “decadent” appear in the second half of “at the mountains of madness.”
February 23rd, 2011 at 11:35 pm
I’m sure it is no coincidence that there are 42 instances of the great Cthulhu.
February 24th, 2011 at 7:23 pm
So, reading this just gave me a huge revelation from a joke that my friends and I had going for years. There was a movie on the sci fi channel called “Dagon,” with the line, “You are my brother. You will be my lover – forever.” We laughed and quoted this ENDLESSLY, but I never actually knew what Dagon originated from. It is becoming increasingly clear to me that I need to actually READ Lovecraft!
February 25th, 2011 at 7:36 am
Dagon is actually a pretty good movie, but I’m also a huge fan of Innsmouth.
March 1st, 2011 at 12:10 pm
You missed Foetid/Fetid or however one spells it.
March 1st, 2011 at 12:15 pm
Perhaps add a count for “Nodens” in the Gods, Eldritch Beings etc.. category?
Or maybe a count for “Elder Sign” though I’m not sure where that would go…
March 1st, 2011 at 12:17 pm
Good catch, hdan Only 22 uses. Surprised me.
Mark got 8 matches for Nodens, only 2 for elder sign.
March 1st, 2011 at 12:21 pm
Squamous only once? And where’s Rugose? Stross will be interested in the results, I’m sure!
March 1st, 2011 at 12:23 pm
There’s a word I can’t quite remember now that means, apparently, “froglike” or “like an amphibian” that he uses all the time. It’s a fifty-cent Greek-suffix affair. Any idea what I’m talking about, and how often it actually shows up?
March 1st, 2011 at 12:25 pm
@Matt Probably batrachian
March 1st, 2011 at 12:26 pm
Cat only 3 instances of “Rugose.” Squamous was used in collaborations, too, but I didn’t count those…though I’d guess when he used it there it was his idea, not the collaborator’s.
Mark/Terry I actually looked up “batrachian” but only found one instance, so I didn’t include it. Though maybe it’d have been interesting for contrast.
March 1st, 2011 at 12:40 pm
if someone has access to the book, try making a wordle composition out of it!
http://www.wordle.net
March 1st, 2011 at 12:54 pm
@Terry Aha! That’s the one. I knew it started with a “b” but I kept getting sidetracked by “brachy-” words.
If it only shows up once in Lovecraft proper, it must be something that August Derleth did. Still a pretty Lovecraftian word, though, wouldn’t you say?
March 1st, 2011 at 12:56 pm
I was curious to know how often the word “untold” is used – thank you!
March 1st, 2011 at 12:57 pm
TT your wish is my command.
Wordle added to the post!
Matt It’s quite possible Derlethian. Some of them were really picked up on by Lovecraft’s followers.
Ilir only 7 times.
March 1st, 2011 at 1:00 pm
How did “squamous” make it, but “cacodaemoniacal” did not?
March 1st, 2011 at 1:03 pm
utenzil because I hear “squamous” thrown around a lot for Lovecraft? However, the wordcount for “cacodaemoniacal” is only 2, which makes it “one of those cool words Lovecraft introduced us to” but not “one of those he totally overused.”
March 1st, 2011 at 1:06 pm
@Matt – The word you are looking for (I think) is “batrachian”.
March 1st, 2011 at 1:15 pm
@Ahimsa and Others: In my MA thesis, I discussed the reasons why I believe HPL mentioned Nyarlathotep more than any other…uhh, Other God, Old One, etc–because The Crawling Chaos is the only “alien god” character that HPL bothered to develop into an actual character, which suggests Nyarlathotep was one of Grandpa Theobald’s favourite creations. I’m currently in the process of revising the thesis for actual print–that is, I’m removing the academic bullshit-speak and remaking it into a publication actual readers would enjoy reading–and I’ll post it on my blogsite (blog.pegritz.com) under a Creative Commons licenses ASAP! You may enjoy it!
March 1st, 2011 at 1:30 pm
Just thought of one more good search candidate – “gibbering”!
Might just be me, but that’s always been a Lovecraft kind of word in my book
Possibly (under Locations) run a count for the obvious, but still fictional places like Arkham and Miskatonic? Maybe Innsmouth, Dunwich, and Kingsport too?
March 1st, 2011 at 2:04 pm
Derek, thanks for letting me know. Nyarlathotep is one of my favorites, and that sounds like a great read.
March 1st, 2011 at 2:22 pm
Could you check for “non-euclidean”? I thought that was a favorite but now that I look through some examples where I thought it was used, I don’t find it.
March 1st, 2011 at 2:25 pm
Mark “gibber” and all variations thereof is at 10. I’ll do places & update the post tonight.
Brian Only got 2 hits for non-euclidean. Call of Cthulhu & Dreams in the Witch House.
March 1st, 2011 at 2:41 pm
Cool. The word cloud is a little disappointing, but realistic. Could we get another wordle showing just the freaky jargon? (hideous, blasphemous, cyclopean)
March 1st, 2011 at 2:43 pm
Deidzoeb Yes, I decided after I made it that I should do one for the word-count words. However that’ll take a little longer to put together, I’m going to have to wait until I get home from work. I’m already pushing it with comment responses. But definitely, I want to see how it turns out!
March 1st, 2011 at 3:20 pm
I think batrachian and squamous are thought to be popular because Neil Gaiman said so in his parody story “Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar” (in Smoke and Mirrors). Squamous is said to have been used “an awful lot,” which obviously was a bit of a hyperbole.
March 1st, 2011 at 4:10 pm
Squamous actually does appear in “Cthulh mythos” stories a lot. More that it appears in more time stories LIKELY to have been written by Lovecraft but not definitely. Take the following example from Out of the Aeons credited to H.P Lovecraft with Hazel Heald:
“I might call it gigantic—tentacled—proboscidian—octopus-eyed—semi-amorphous—plastic—partly squamous and partly rugose—ugh!”
Hazel Heald was one of the many pseudonyms of H.P. Lovecraft. At the very least, it was a name he did ghost-writing for. I think that’s why Cthulhu Chick keeps saying Lovecrafts ORIGINAL works. If you started throwing in all the possible-but-uncertain, things would get out of hand.
Even if “squamous” gets shortchanged in the process.
March 1st, 2011 at 6:04 pm
I’m curious about “tenebrous” and “chthonic”.
March 1st, 2011 at 6:11 pm
Aloysius For tenebrous, there were 9 instances, but chthonic didn’t show up. Either it’s spelled differently, or not used. (I can’t think of the proper spelling, so I’m not sure)
March 1st, 2011 at 6:15 pm
Mark I added the places you requested!
March 1st, 2011 at 7:34 pm
[...] A list of the frequency H. . Lovecraft used certain words in his fiction. [...]
March 1st, 2011 at 10:36 pm
So “Ia!” doesn’t count as a word?
I kid, of course. Interesting stuff and thank you for posting it.
March 2nd, 2011 at 2:17 am
What about “gambrel”? (Including gambrels and gambreled, of course.) Last time I took a wander through Lovecraft, I was struck by how he couldn’t go a single story without using that word at least once. The only houses or buildings anyone ever lives in are gambreled.
March 2nd, 2011 at 5:34 am
Wonderful and fascinating. Thanks Ruth. I’m genuinely shocked that gibbous only appears nine times. It always seemed to me you could barely glance at a page of HPL without coming across it. I was obviously too excitable!
March 2nd, 2011 at 6:53 am
Brad Good call on “gambrel,” it or its variations show up 21 times!
March 2nd, 2011 at 11:09 am
I don’t see “ophidian,” i.e., snakelike.
March 2nd, 2011 at 11:16 am
John “ophidian” – just 1 count. I wouldn’t be surprised if it also turned up in “The Curse of Yig,” but that’s a collab.
March 2nd, 2011 at 5:42 pm
Eldritch is only 23! gosh, that’s an eye opener
many thanks, this is fascinating.
The new Lovecraftian eZine has left me with a need to re-read the creator…
Thanks too…huge thanks in fact…for the ebook. I’ll download it tomorrow
March 2nd, 2011 at 10:03 pm
Thank you for adding the places
I’m amazed that Arkham only appears one more time than Leng!
March 3rd, 2011 at 1:36 pm
Fascinating, Ruth, and thanks for the yeoman (yeowoman?) work on the ebook as well.
My only disappointment is that, if I understand you correctly, you did the word frequency analysis with an ordinary word processor. I was hoping I was about to learn about nifty concordance software!
March 3rd, 2011 at 5:49 pm
The top scorers are:
260 – Hideous
189 – Faint (ed/ing)
159 – Arkham
158 – Leng
157 – Nameless
128 – Antiqu (e/arian)
115 – Singular (ly)
115 – Madness
104 – Innsmouth
94 – Abnormal
92 – Blasphem (y/ous)
76 – Accursed
71 – Loath (ing/some)
67 – Kadath
62 – Miskatonic
59 – Stench
55 – Daemoniac
54 – Shunned
49 – Necronomicon
47 – Nyarlathotep
47 – Cyclopean
43 – Kingsport
42 – Cthulhu
41 – Dunwich
March 4th, 2011 at 3:35 pm
Suggested terms: “Hastur,” “Carcossa,” and “Hali (book of).”
I don’t think they show up often, but I know they show up once or twice. This is the evidence that ties the Cthulhu mythos, via the King in Yellow, back to Ambrose Bierce.
March 4th, 2011 at 7:12 pm
To address the problem that the Wordle showed a lot of very common words, and not many that give you the flavor of Lovecraft, I’d like to point something out.
Both Google and Amazon have features that extract words or phrases that show up in a particular book more often than in the average collection of text.
Amazon has a list called “Statistically Improbable Phrases” on their page for a book. For example, on the page for Lovecraft’s Tales from Library of America, the phrases are:
elder things, shining trapezohedron, curvilinear hieroglyphs, tarry stickiness, greenish soapstones, twilight abysses, spiky image, nameless scent, shunned house, twilit grotto, attic laboratory, membraneous wings, hill noises, fishy odour, domed hills, colour out, shadow out
Google Books displays a combination of individual words and phrases that are relatively improbable. At the bottom of the Google Books page for Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu, the list is:
Akeley Akeley’s Ammi ancient aout Arkham Arkham House Arthur Jermyn began Blake body Brattleboro Call of Cthulhu Charles Dexter Ward church colour cult curious Dagon dark dead death door dream Dunwich Horror earth eyes face faint fear felt frightful grotesque H. P. Lovecraft heard Herbert West hideous hills hint horrible horror human imagination Innsmouth island knew Kuranes later legends Legrasse letter light living looked Lovecraft Marsh mind Miskatonic University monstrous moon Mountains of Madness Nahum nameless Necronomicon never night Nyarlathotep odour once queer road roofs screamed secret seemed seen Shadow Shadow Over Innsmouth shewed sight sound stone story strange Street tale tell terrible things thought tion told tower town unknown vague Vermont voice walls Weird West whispered Whisperer in Darkness window wonder woods Yuggoth Zadok
Thought you’d find this interesting. It depends upon fancy statistical analysis that may not be available to you, but it’s worth thinking about.
March 4th, 2011 at 7:33 pm
Bill Thanks. I’m actually working on a document that Wordle can work with based entirely on these numbers. Unfortunately, it requires making the word appear the same number of times as it’s in the list. A picture of how that looks right now: http://twitpic.com/457td4
So it’ll take me a bit, but I plan to update it.
March 8th, 2011 at 6:40 pm
For me, the typical Lovecraft phrase is “shamble the tenebrous halls of elder night”. Or “corridors” instead of “halls”. Aloysius Pangloss mentioned “tenebrous” (and spelled “chthonic” correctly), but I’m curious about the others. Well, not “of” and “the”.
And how about “curious(ly)”? As in “curiously abnormal”. And “mindless”? Which brings me to “gibbering”.
March 8th, 2011 at 10:41 pm
dank
miasma
moist(ure)
amorphous
cat
gelatinous
lurk
manuscript
pipe/piping
proportion, etc., including disproportionate
protoplasm
pshent
shapeless
tentacle/tentacular, etc.
unmentionable
Or is that too many?
March 9th, 2011 at 11:47 am
Just rolled for 1D4-1 SAN loss
March 9th, 2011 at 1:31 pm
Don’t forget “Necrous” and “Necrotic” as well!!
March 20th, 2011 at 6:02 am
What, no furtive?
March 21st, 2011 at 6:54 pm
If you go to http://www.wordle.net/advanced or just go to wordle and hit advanced in the top right and enter the following in the first box, it will give you a wordle of the first list based off the frequencies you gave.
Abnormal:94
Accursed:76
Antediluvian:10
Antiqu~(e/arian):128
Blasphem~(y/ous):92
Charnel:20
Comprehension:9
Cyclopean:47
Decadent:32
Daemoniac:55
Effulgence:4
Eldritch:23
Faint~(ed/ing):189
Foetid:22
Gambrel:21
Gibbous:9
Hideous:260
Immemorial:25
Indescribable:25
Iridescence:2
Loath~(ing/some):71
Madness:115
Mortal:27
Nameless:157
Noisome:33
Shunned:54
Singular~(ly):115
Squamous:1
Stench:59
Stygian:6
Swarthy:14
Ululat~(e/ing):4
Unnamable:22
Unutterable:13
March 22nd, 2011 at 6:22 am
I’m happy…Nyarlathotep makes it in as #1 Most Mentioned Eldritch Being!
I shall therefore continue to write more roleplaying scenarios based around him than anyone else (insert mad laughter here).
March 29th, 2011 at 12:40 pm
Very nice. You might want to consider degenerate, Spectral, ultraterrene, paroxysm, noisome, and sinister. I didn’t see those on the list. This is a fun project!
April 29th, 2011 at 12:41 pm
Is it in prose, poetry or both?
I’m also wondering which of the Gods are originally Lovecraftian. Well, it seems obvious but are there any academic proofs. He himself stated that they heavily alluded to each other.
April 30th, 2011 at 11:29 am
I developed the listing of gods a bit and included two races Mi-Go and The Great Old Ones. I searched only through prose and used texts available at http://www.hplovecraft.com I also indexed all the mentions so you can check it. It was a devastating “copy-paste” business
So there it is, story indexes are in chronological order:
DEITIES:
Dagon – 1+title (Dagon); 13 (The Shadow over Innsmouth) = 15
Nyarlathotep – 11+title (Nyarlathotep); 1 (The Rats in the Walls); 26 (The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath); 1 (The Last Test); 1 (The Mound); 3 (The Whisperer in the Darkness); 2 (The Dreams in the Witch House); 1 (The Shadow out of Time); 1 (The Haunter of the Dark) = 48
Azathoth – title (Azathoth); 6 (The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath); 1 (The Mound); 2 (The Whisperer in the Darkness); 6 (The Dreams in the Witch House); 1 (The Horror in the Museum); 1 (The Thing on the Doorstep); 2 (The Haunter of the Dark) = 19
Cthulhu – title+23 (The Call of Cthulhu); 1 (The Dunwich Horror); 3 (The Electric Executioner); 1 (The Mound); 1 (Medusa’s Coil); 5 (The Whisperer in the Darkness); 6 (At the Mountains of Madness); 4 (The Shadow over Innsmouth); 3 (The Horror in the Museum); 1 (Through the Gates of the Silver Key) = 49
Nodens – 2 (The Strange High House in the Mist); 6 (The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath) = 8
Yog-Sothoth – 10 (The Case of Charles Dexter Ward); 1 (The Last Test); 13 (The Dunwich Horror); 2 (The Whisperer in the Darkness); 1 (At the Mountains of Madness); 1 (The Horror in the Museum); 1 (Through the Gates of the Silver Key); 1 (The Haunter of the Dark) = 30
Shub-Niggurath – 1 (The Last Test); 1 (The Dunwich Horror); 2 (The Mound); 2 (Medusa’s Coil); 4 (The Whisperer in the Darkness); 1 (The Dreams in the Witch House); 1 (The Man of Stone); 2 (The Horror in the Museum); 3 (Out of the Aeons); 2 (The Thing on the Doorstep); 1 (The Diary of Alonzo Typer) = 20
Shoggoth – 17 (At the Mountains of Madness); 2 (The Shadow over Innsmouth); 3 (The Thing on the Doorstep) = 22
RACES:
Mi-Go – 2 (The Whisperer in the Darkness); 5 (At the Mountains of Madness) = 7
The Great Old Ones – 4 (The Call of Cthulhu); 1 (At the Mountains of Madness) = 5
June 23rd, 2011 at 4:31 pm
I second “spectral.” An unforgivable omission. And how about “fungous” or “febrile?”
June 23rd, 2011 at 6:42 pm
Updated with requests up to this point. Anything not included only had a small showing in the texts, less than 10 instances (except a few very odd ones which got included anyway).
July 26th, 2011 at 11:23 pm
[...] words “Faint (ed/ing)” occurs 189 times in the collected published works of H.P. Lovecraft, and it is almost his most commonly used [...]
August 31st, 2011 at 5:35 pm
I owe a great deal to HPL for introducing many words into my own vocabulary and thus enhancing my own writing (mostly poetry).
My personal favorite HPL word: inchoate.
September 12th, 2011 at 10:34 pm
How about the word “Unwholesome”?
September 29th, 2011 at 7:34 pm
[...] a word from this list of Lovecraftian words or this list of obscure words (or one from both if you’re feeling ambitious). Use your chosen [...]
October 4th, 2011 at 9:42 am
[...] a word from this list of Lovecraftian words or this list of obscure words (or one from both if you’re feeling ambitious). Use your chosen [...]
October 9th, 2011 at 4:40 pm
[...] a word from this list of Lovecraftian words or this list of obscure words (or one from both if you’re feeling ambitious). Use your [...]
October 10th, 2011 at 1:48 pm
[...] a word from this list of Lovecraftian words or this list of obscure words (or one from both if you’re feeling ambitious). Use your chosen [...]
October 11th, 2011 at 6:59 pm
[...] Halloween, this month’s prompt is: Some Things Dark and Dangerous. Choose a word from this list of Lovecraftian words or this list of obscure words (or one from both if you’re feeling ambitious). Use your [...]
October 14th, 2011 at 2:05 pm
[...] a word from this list of Lovecraftian words or this list of obscure words (or one from both if you’re feeling ambitious). Use your [...]
October 19th, 2011 at 8:13 am
[...] a word from this list of Lovecraftian words or this list of obscure words (or one from both if you’re feeling ambitious). Use your chosen [...]
October 26th, 2011 at 11:16 pm
Dagon is found in the old testament of the bible. A fish god to the Philistines. (All those years of sundayschool and one thing I learn is about Lovecraft’s writings.)
October 29th, 2011 at 1:06 am
Awesome site – love what you’re doing:)
February 22nd, 2012 at 7:32 pm
[...] through a few old bookmarks on my browser and came across Cthulhu Chick’s compilation of Lovecraft’s Favourite Words. As she points out it’s hard to miss his tendency to use obscure and sometimes convoluted [...]
March 1st, 2012 at 10:01 pm
this is bad ass helped me a lot love the craft
March 27th, 2012 at 12:07 pm
[...] my travels through the stygian corridors of the noisome internet, I ran across the brilliant site Cthulhu Chick in which we’re given a list of some of H.P. Lovecraft’s favorite words—the often antiquated [...]