Gormenghast

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. A vast, decaying, labyrinthine castle-city in the fantasy novels of Mervyn Peake, home to the Earl of Groan and his household
2. The imaginary ancient stone fortress that serves as the sprawling, ritual-bound setting of Mervyn Peake's fantasy trilogy
3. The fictional mansion-fortress of Mervyn Peake's novels, a crumbling maze of rooms and rituals ruled by a hereditary earl

Etymology: Gormenghast is a proper noun, the name of the fictional castle and its surrounding realm in Mervyn Peake's trilogy, the first volume of which, "Titus Groan," was published in 1946. Peake built the name from ordinary English materials rather than borrowing it from any language. Its opening "Gorm" sounds like a dull, heavy word for a thick mess, and "-enghast" has a ghostly, ancient ring, so the name sounds like an old fortress that has been sinking under its own weight for centuries. Peake's notebooks and the novels themselves show him inventing an entire self-contained world, with its own customs, ranks and ceremonies, so the name works as a sign of that closed, decaying place rather than as a reference to a real town or legend. Readers and critics have sometimes linked it to the Gothic castle tradition, but no specific source for the name has been firmly established, and the name's sounds do most of the work.