The Top 10 Most Commonly Used H.P. Lovecraft Words

Cthulhu Chick, long time crocheter of tiny Cthulhus and also a librarian getting her masters in library science, has been hard at work lately compiling an eReadable collection of the Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft and it’s finally finished.

So, helpfully, she’s also kept track of some of the words that we particularly associate with Lovecraft, like “gibbous,” “eldritch,” and “stygian,” and has discovered how many times he actually used them in his original works.  And so without further ado, the ten most popular Lovecraftian words in Lovecraft are…

1. Hideous — 260
2. Faint (ed/ing) — 189
3. Nameless — 157
4. Antiqu (e/arian) — 128
5. Madness — 115
6. Singular (ly) — 115
7. Abnormal — 94
8. Blasphem (y/ous) – 92
9. Accursed — 76
10. Loath (ing/some) — 71

Surprises include that gibbous is actually used less than nine times in Lovecraft’s fiction, and even standbys like charnel and eldritch are only used about twenty times.

Not-Surprises include that this would be the greatest game of Apples to Apples ever.

More Lovecraftian words and their frequency can be found at Cthulhu Chick.

(via Boing Boing.)