weird fiction en · NOUN
Etymology
Popularized by H. P. Lovecraft.
Meanings
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(uncountable) A macabre subgenre of speculative fiction originating in the late 19th and early 20th century, pre-dating the horror and fantasy genres.
Weird fiction is, after all, notoriously typified by the presence of entities so radically different from normality that they are, to borrow a characteristic phrase from H. P. Lovecraft, “impossible to describe” (Lovecraft 2014: 404).
2020, Julius Greve, Florian Zappe, editors, The American Weird: Concept and Medium, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, pages 30–31: