Lovecraftian

From Lovecraft +‎ -ian, in reference to H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937), an American author of fantasy, horror, and science fiction, noted for combining these three genres within single narratives.

• IPA^(key): /lʌvˈkɹæfti.ən/

• Audio (US):

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Lovecraftian (comparative more Lovecraftian, superlative most Lovecraftian)

1. Frighteningly monstrous and otherworldly, sometimes with terrifyingly unnatural anatomy.
   • 1984, Dean R. Koontz, Darkfall, page 362:

     The tip of the thing was equipped with long whiplike appendages that writhed around a loose, drooling, toothless mouth large enough to swallow a man whole...Perhaps this was the only thing that the escaping Lovecraftian entity had thus far been able to extrude between the opening Gates — this one finger.

2. Of, pertaining to, or emulating the style or works of author H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937).

   Lovecraftian horror

   Lovecraftian fiction

   • 2006, A. Blackwood, August Derleth, The Ithaqua Cycle, page 102:

     The present story, "Born of the Winds", is one of the best. For one thing, the vision of the story is pure Lovecraftian cosmic pessimism.

   • 2007 September 23, David Bowman, “Torchlit Crit”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN:

     That abandonment, incidentally, compelled Sam’s mother to fill her young son’s head with H. P. Lovecraftian horror-style lies about the interior of Emily Dickinson’s house, lies that motivated her son’s break-in to begin with.

Lovecraftian (plural Lovecraftians)

1. A fan of American author H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937).
   • 1944, The New York Times Book Review, page 19:

     For zealous Lovecraftians there are a few choice tidbits—a short autobiography, his commonplace book, and his “History and Chronology of the Necronomicon.”

   • 2005, Michel Houellebecq, translated by Dorna Khazeni, H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, Cernunnos, Abrams Books, published 2019, →ISBN:

     Finally, we can draw a definitive fourth circle, at the absolute heart of HPL’s myth, which contains what most rabid Lovecraftians continue to call, almost in spite of themselves, the “great texts.”

   • 2014, Gaiman Neil, Acolytes of Cthulhu, Titan Books, →ISBN:

     Everyone is a “creative anachronist,” but we Lovecraftians, like our cousins in other Buddha-fields of fandom, have elected to live a minority, sectarian existence in what sociologists Berger and Luckmann (The Social Construction of Reality) call a “finite province of meaning.”

• Cthulhu
• Necronomicon