Word for Wednesday: Frankenstein

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It’s time for our last Word for Wednesday post in October!

This month’s blog posts have been themed around all things spooky and scary. So far, we’ve looked at the origins of the words ghost, werewolf, and vampire. Today’s word is technically the name of a character from a book.

Frankenstein was written in 1818 by English author Mary Shelley. The story is about a scientist called Victor Frankenstein who, in an unusual experiment, creates a monstrous living creature out of old body parts.

Here is how the creature is described in the book:

“His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.”

Today, the word Frankenstein might make you think of a great green monster. This is because many adaptations of the Frankenstein story depict the creature with green or grey skin. The scientist’s name is now often used to describe his creation as well. You can learn about other words that get their names from the people who created or discovered them here.

Frankenstein is often used as an adjective to describe something that has become frightening or dangerous to its maker.

28 Oct 2020
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Word for Wednesday: Frankenstein

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