Its head is depicted as similar to the entirety of a gigantic octopus, with an unknown number of tentacles surrounding its supposed mouth. Lovecraft describes a statue of Cthulhu as: "A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind." Ĭthulhu is said to resemble a green octopus, dragon, and a human caricature, hundreds of meters tall, with webbed, human-looking arms and legs and a pair of rudimentary wings on its back. Others use the pronunciation Katulu or Kutulu or / k ə ˈ t uː l uː/. Long after Lovecraft's death, Chaosium stated in the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game: "we say it kuh-THOOL-hu", even while noting that Lovecraft said it differently.
The name is often preceded by the epithet Great, Dead, or Dread. Cthulhu has also been spelled in many other ways, including Tulu, Katulu, and Kutulu. According to Lovecraft, this is merely the closest that the human vocal apparatus can come to reproducing the syllables of an alien language. Joshi points out, however, that Lovecraft gave different pronunciations on different occasions. The 'u' is about like that in 'full', and the first syllable is not unlike 'klul' in sound, hence the 'h' represents the guttural thickness" yielding something akin to /χ(ə)ʟʊʟˈluː/. Lovecraft transcribed the pronunciation of Cthulhu as Khlûl′-hloo, and said, "the first syllable pronounced gutturally and very thickly. The chthonic, or earth-dwelling, spirit has precedents in numerous ancient and medieval mythologies, often guarding mines and precious underground treasures, notably in the Germanic dwarfs and the Greek Chalybes, Telchines, or Dactyls. Invented by Lovecraft in 1928, the name Cthulhu was probably chosen to echo the word chthonic (Ancient Greek "of the earth"), as apparently suggested by Lovecraft himself at the end of his 1923 tale " The Rats in the Walls". 1 Etymology, spelling, and pronunciationĮtymology, spelling, and pronunciation.
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