acherontic

Adjective capitalized: Acherontic

Acherontic

1. Of, pertaining to or resembling Acheron (one of the rivers located in the underworld according to ancient Greek mythology).
   • It was a Comedy, to see what a crowding (as if it had bene at a newe Play,) there was vpon the Acheronticque Strond,1607, Thomas Dekker, chapter 4, in A Knights Conjuring, London: William Barley
   • Fierce earthquakes tear the world, the heavens bow,
     A passage opens to the shades below:
     From acherontick shores black fiends ascend,1726, anonymous author, The British Apollo, 3rd edition, London: Theodore Sanders, page 106
2. (figuratively) Of or pertaining to hell.
   • How did those Aegyptians storme, when Moses and Aaron, Crumwell and Cranmer came, to deliuer Gods Israel, from that Acheronticall ignorance?1623, George Langford, Search the Scriptures, London: John Clarke, Section 7, p. 43
   • 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.1638, Thomas Herbert, Some Yeares Travels into Divers Parts of Asia and Afrique, London: Jacob Blome and Richard Bishop, page 17

   Synonyms:

   hellish, infernal, Plutonian, Tartarean, Hadean, helly, Plutonic, stygian, subtartarean

3. (figuratively) Lacking joy and comfort; nearing death.
   • Depart to blacke nights Acheronticke Cell,1599, John Weever, Epigrammes in the Oldest Cut, and Newest Fashion, London: Thomas Bushell, The Thirde Weeke, Epig. 7
   • […] 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.1621, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, Oxford: Henry Cripps, Part 3, Section 3, Member 4, Subsection 2, p. 701

   Synonyms:

   bleak, cheerless, dismal, gloomy, lugubrious, moribund