The lunar cycles this year have been incredibly strong, have you noticed? Mordecai noticed (and thus I did, sharing a house as we do); his moods have been erratic, he’s had insomnia, and his hair has changed from perfectly coiffed to being uncharacteristically unruly. Clearly, I believe he has inherited some lycanthropy, it being a recessive gene in parts of our family, and it would not surprise me one bit if we were to witness my brother turning into a werewolf one night.
I have stepped up my venomous plant plantings because of this.
Mordecai’s possible lycanthropy brings me to today’s word.
Teratoid is an adjective meaning both abnormal in form or development; malformed and resembling a monster. It is also a noun, medically speaking, meaning of a pathological growth, exceedingly complex or highly organized.
Teratoid comes from the Ancient Greek τερας or teras, which means monster plus εἶδος or eidos, which means form, likeness. (Terat + oid.)
Medical doctors might discuss tumors as teratoids or teratomas. This means that the tumor is abnormal and displays mutant and abnormal qualities.
Strictly speaking, if Mordecai is a lycanthrope, he would not be a teratoid human. He would be a werewolf, which, we all know, is not a monster but is in fact a human who is able to shape shift into a wolf-like creature. There is a difference, you know.
18th Century Etching of a "werewolf"
