Word.ws English Dictionary

Necronomicon

UK/ˌnɛkɹəˈnɒmɪkən/US/ˌnɛkɹəˈnɑmɪkən/

Necronomicon proper noun: a fictional grimoire of arcane and forbidden knowledge whose contents can drive a person mad.

Proper noun

the Necronomicon

  1. A fictional grimoire of arcane and forbidden knowledge whose contents can drive a person mad.
    • So matters went till that night when Williams brought home the infamous Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred ... he had always wondered why men paled when they spoke of it. The old bookseller had told him that only five copies were known to have survived the shocked edicts of the priests and...c. 1926, H.P. Lovecraft, The Descendant
    • The container was a set of ceramic rune-stones and their accompanying manual. The book was The Necronomicon.2002, Calpernia Sarah Addams, Mark 947: A Life Shaped by God, Gender and Force of Will, page 81
    Synonyms:
    Kitab al-Azif

Synonyms of Necronomicon

Origin of Necronomicon

Pseudo-loan from Ancient Greek, derived from νεκρός (nekrós, “dead”) + νόμος (nómos, “law”) + εἰκών (eikṓn, “image”), literally “an image of the law of the dead”. Coined by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. By surface analysis, necro- + -nomicon.

Questions about Necronomicon

What does Necronomicon mean?
Necronomicon means a fictional grimoire of arcane and forbidden knowledge whose contents can drive a person mad.
What part of speech is Necronomicon?
Necronomicon is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce Necronomicon?
Necronomicon is pronounced /ˌnɛkɹəˈnɒmɪkən/ (UK).

Words near Necronomicon in the dictionary

  1. necromorphous
  2. necromutilomania
  3. necromutilomaniac
  4. necromyophylous
  5. necronite
  6. Necronomicon
  7. necronym
  8. necronyms
  9. necropanspermia
  10. necropants
  11. necrophagan

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Necronomicon (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Necronomicon.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/necronomicon. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.