loup-garou

loup-garou \loo-ga-ROO\, noun:

A werewolf; lycanthrope.

In the bushes, the loup-garou snarled quietly, and its eyes brightened, burned with scarlet fury.
-- Jim Butcher, Fool Moon

Those who were of French descent among them, and full of the old Acadian superstitions, explained it simply enough by saying he was a "loup garou," or "were wolf," and resigned themselves to the impossibility of contending against a creature of such supernatural malignity and power.
-- Charles Roberts, "The Gray Master," Concord Junction, 1911

Loup-garou stems from the French word of the same spelling which also means werewolf. The word loup also means "wolf" in French. It entered English in the late 1500s.

eidolon

eidolon \ahy-DOH-luhn\, noun:

1. A phantom; apparition.
2. An ideal.

"An eidolon, a manifestation, if you will, sent up to us from the uttermost deeps to bring about the end of the world."
-- Neil Gaiman, Looking for the Girl

It was the ghoulish shade of decay, antiquity, and desolation; the putrid, dripping eidolon of unwholesome revelation, the awful baring of that which the merciful earth should always hide.
-- H.P. Lovecraft, The Outsider

Eidolon comes from the more common word idol, which originally referred to pagan religious idols. It was first used in the 1820s.

cantrip

cantrip \KAHN-trip\, noun:

1. Chiefly Scot. A magic spell; trick by sorcery.
2. Chiefly British. Artful shamming meant to deceive.

Used properly, it may be possible to drive a vampire or garou into frenzy with this cantrip.
-- Steve Long, Ethan Skemp, Combat

And before I knew it her arms were around me, and she smelt of lavender and delicious silk, and her voice in my ear was whispering something—a cantrip, I thought, with a twist of surprise, a cantrip, just like the days in Lansquenet—and then I looked up and it wasn't Maman there at all.
-- Joanne Harris, The Girl with No Shadow: A Novel

Cantrip is of uncertain origin, but it is most likely a variation of the Old English word calcatrippe which referred to both a plant and a type of iron ball used to block calvary in warfare.

teratoid

teratoid \TER-uh-toid\, adjective:

Resembling a monster.

They wandered, amazed, through street after street of these teratoid villas and they concluded that the architecture of Knokke-le-Zoute was unique and far more disrespectful to the eye than that of any other maritime settlement they had ever seen, worse, by far, than Brighton or Atlantic City.
-- Jean Stafford, "The Children's Game," The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford, 1958

Later she rechecked the engraving and was appalled to see that Lincoln had lain on what appeared to be a teratoid, golden oak, four-poster bed.
-- William Manchester, The Death of a President, November 20-November 25, 1963

Teratoid was coined in the 1870s. The root terat- is a Greek combining form that means "indicating a monster."

supernorma

supernormal \soo-per-NAWR-muhl\, adjective:

1. In excess of the normal or average: supernormal faculties; supernormal production.
2. Lying beyond normal or natural powers of comprehension: supernormal intimations.

On the other hand, the voyager may also feel that he possesses supernormal powers of perception and movement, that he can perform miracles, extraordinary feats of bodily control, etc …
-- Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, Richard Alpert, The Psychedelic Experience

The limbs twitched, the eyes gleamed, the blood-pressure appeared heightened, and there was a supernormal pinkness in the epidermis of the cheek.
-- P. G. Wodehouse, Summer Lightning

Supernormal was first used in the 1860s. The prefix super- has a number of common senses. In this case, it is used in the sense of "an individual, thing, or property that exceeds customary norms or levels" as in superstar.

uncanny

uncanny \uhn-KAN-ee\, adjective:

1. Having or seeming to have a supernatural or inexplicable basis; beyond the ordinary or normal; extraordinary: uncanny accuracy; an uncanny knack of foreseeing trouble.
2. Mysterious; arousing superstitious fear or dread; uncomfortably strange: Uncanny sounds filled the house.

Again the mood is uncanny, with strange perturbations in the atmosphere, the abstruse word choice purposely jarring: "suzerain," "diacritic," "acephalous," "zebu," "argute."
-- Charles Bukowski, introduction by David Stephen Calonne, Absence of the Hero

She saw him put his hand on the shoulder of their mother's chair, touch the fringe on a lampshade, as if to confirm for himself that the uncanny persistence of half-forgotten objects, all in their old places, was not some trick of the mind.
-- Marilynne Robinson, Home

Uncanny once meant "mischievous." The association with the supernatural arose in the 1770s. The word canny means careful, astute, skilled and frugal.

delate

delate \dih-LEYT\, verb:

1. Chiefly Scot. To inform against; denounce or accuse.
2. Archaic. To relate; report: to delate an offense.

"I will delate you for a warlock to the Privy Council!" said Sir John. "I will send you to your master, the devil, with the help of a tar-barrel and a torch!"
-- Sir Walter Scott, "Wandering Willie's Tale," Selected Short Stories

What's more, if you persist in disobeying me, I'll have no choice but to delate you to His Excellency the Archbishop.
-- Andrew M. Greeley, The Priestly Sins

Delate stems from the Latin word dēlātus which is the past participle of dēferre meaning "to bring down," like the modern English word defer.