Gothic Lexis

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Horror:

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1) Fear generated by physical shock. Actually seen or experienced.

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Terror:

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1) Fear generated through uncertainty or obscurity.
2) Shadowy and insubstantial.
3) A threat to the imagination.

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The Abject:

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1) In between - ambiguous.
2) Something that breaks down the barriers between subject and object or self and other. e.g. a corpse.

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The Sublime:

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1) A sense of awe, astonishment, of being overwhelmed in the face of something much bigger than ourselves. It depends upon obscurity.

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Sublime Terror:

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1) 'Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger... is productive of the strongest emotion'.

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The Uncanny:

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1) The strange, eerie or mysterious.
2) In Freudian terms, something familiar and strange at the same time.

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Taboos:

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1) Cultural, moral or religious rules which are put under pressure or violated (e.g. incest, murder, blasphemy, perversion).

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The Supernatural:

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1) What is above nature; mysterious; inexplicable.

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Opposition:

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1) Sanity/Madness
2) Wild/Domestic
3) Living/Dead
4) Reason/Passion
5) Often shown to collapse in the Gothic genre

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Otherness:

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1) Anything which is different from ourselves and therefore perceived in some way as a threat.

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Obscurity:

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1) Both physical and mental. Darkness, fogginess, confusion, and things not understood.

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The Revenant:

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1) The past, or 'what comes back'.
2) This could be an evil deed from the past, or a fear that we though we banished. Ghost hauntings, and the return of the repressed.

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Doppelgänger:

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1) A double, mirror image or alter-ego. Usually reveals the negative, evil or repressed.

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The Liminal:

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1) The experience of being on a threshold or a boundary. Neither one thing or the other; the point of uncertainty and fluidity.

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Abhuman:

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1) A subject only partly human and possibly in the process of becoming something monstrous.
2) Characterised by variability... continuously in danger of becoming not 'itself'.

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Grotesque:

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1) Things that are very strange and ugly in an unnatural way.

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Macabre:

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1) Things that involve the horror of death or violence.
2) If a story involves lots of blood and gore, you can call it macabre.

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Eerie:

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1) Spooky, creepy or suggestively supernatural.

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Preternatural:

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1) Something that seems oddly abnormal and out of sync with everything else.

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Ethereal:

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1) Something airy and insubstantial, such as a ghostly figure at the top of the stairs.
2) It might also be something delicate and/or light.

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Subterraneous:

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1) Lying beyond what is openly revealed or avowed (especially being kept in the background or deliberately concealed).

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Entrapment / Imprisonment:

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1) The act of confining someone.
2) The state of being imprisoned.

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Masochism:

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1) The tendency to derive sexual gratification from one's own pain or humiliation.
2) The enjoyment of an activity that appears to be painful or tedious.

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Sadism:

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1) The derivation of pleasure as a result of inflicting pain, cruelty, degradation, humiliation, or watching such behaviours inflicted on others.

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Necromancy:

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1) The art of raising the spirits of the dead, either for their predictions about the future, or their ghostly help in making something happen.

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Necrophilia:

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1) A person's fascination with, and sexual attraction to, corpses.

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Nymphomaniac:

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1) (Used of women) affected with excessive sexual desire.

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Sensibility:

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1) Your ability to feel or be aware of something.
2) Your ability to respond to emotions or to appreciate artistic works.

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Somnambulism:

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1) Sleepwalking.

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Metamorphosis:

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1) A striking change in appearance or character or circumstances.

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Misogynistic:

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1) A dislike or hatred of women, or a deep-rooted bias against women in particular.

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Transgression:

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1) Something that is against a command or law.
2) The violation of a particular societal, moral or natural law. Put simply, it is breaking boundaries - or breaking rules of society.