Acherontic

• acherontic
• acherontical (obsolete)

Acherontic

1. Of, pertaining to or resembling Acheron (one of the rivers located in the underworld according to ancient Greek mythology).

   Coordinate terms: Cocytean, Lethean, Phlegethontic, Stygian

   • 1607, Thomas Dekker, A Knights Conjuring, London: William Barley, Chapter 4,

     It was a Comedy, to see what a crowding (as if it had bene at a newe Play,) there was vpon the Acheronticque Strond,

   • 1726, anonymous, The British Apollo, London: Theodore Sanders, 3rd edition, p. 106,

     Fierce earthquakes tear the world, the heavens bow,

     A passage opens to the shades below:

     From acherontick shores black fiends ascend,

   • 1867, Thomas Carlyle, Shooting Niagara: and After? London: Chapman and Hall, Chapter 10, p. 53,

     Is Free Industry free to convert all our rivers into Acherontic sewers; England generally into a roaring sooty smith’s forge?

   • 1987, Paul Breslin, The Psycho-Political Muse, University of Chicago Press, Chapter 8, p. 179,

     Although Wright’s underwater man in Venice may remind us of the ghosts of the drowned in the Ohio River, this Italian fantasy is more benign; the canal is not like the Acherontic Ohio […]

2. (figurative) Of or pertaining to hell.

   Synonyms: hellish, infernal, Plutonian, Tartarean

   • 1623, George Langford, Search the Scriptures, London: John Clarke, Section 7, p. 43,

     How did those Aegyptians storme, when Moses and Aaron, Crumwell and Cranmer came, to deliuer Gods Israel, from that Acheronticall ignorance?

   • 1638, Thomas Herbert, Some Yeares Travels into Divers Parts of Asia and Afrique, London: Jacob Blome and Richard Bishop, p. 17,

     Both sex, hideously cut, and gash, and pink in sundry works, their browes, nose, cheeks, armes, brest, back, belly, thighes and legges in Acherontick order: in a word, are so deformed, that if they had studied to become antick, they might be praised for invention.

   • 1895, Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, New York: Harper, 1896, Part 6, Chapter 4, p. 428,

     […] they proceeded through the fog like Acherontic shades for a long while, without sound or gesture.

3. (figurative) Lacking joy and comfort[1]; nearing death.

   Synonyms: bleak, cheerless, dismal, gloomy, lugubrious, moribund

   • 1599, John Weever, Epigrammes in the Oldest Cut, and Newest Fashion, London: Thomas Bushell, The Thirde Weeke, Epig. 7,

     Depart to blacke nights Acheronticke Cell,

   • 1621, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, Oxford: Henry Cripps, Part 3, Section 3, Member 4, Subsection 2, p. 701,

     […] it is most odious, when an old Acheronticke dizard, that hath one foote in his graue, shall flicker after a young wench, what can be more detestable.

   • 1860, Walter Thornbury, Turkish Life and Character, London: Smith, Elder, Volume 1, Chapter 9, p. 213,

     I see no owls, though I am told that at night they fill these Acherontic woods with demon hooting […]

   • 1947, Frank Waters, The Yogi of Cockroach Court, Chicago: Sage Books, 1972, Chapter 10, p. 225,

     It was twilight in the streets. On every corner glowed lights from doors and dusty windows. Acherontic figures lounged by lazily or sat against the walls.

   • 2001, Timothy West, A Moment Towards the End of the Play… London: Nick Hern Books, Chapter 22, p. 176,

     In Manchester, our designer Roy Stonehouse had built the dark lanes of his [Dickens’] Acherontic township on the low-lying land behind Water Street […]

• anchoretic