teratology · /tayr-ə-TOL-ə-jee/ · /tɛrəˈtɒlədʒi/. noun. The study of physical abnormalities, gross defects, and the conditions that give rise to them. From Greek prefix *terato-* (of or pertaining to monsters), from Greek teras (monster or monstrosity). See also: teratoid, teratophobia, teratophilia, teratogenetic, teratoma, teratical.
“Teratology and the iconography of nightmare were his hobbies…” (H. P. Lovecraft)
“…the silence rumbled into unwelcome life with the sound of heavy breathing — a slack snorting that belonged to something teratoid and beastly.” (Kate Atkinson)
“This is more than sheer teratological exuberance, however: it is an assault on conventional reality.” (China Miéville, on H. P. Lovecraft)
“…this bull ends up begetting on Minos’s queen the Minotaur, a hideous teratoid monster who has to be secreted in a special labyrinth and propitiated with human flesh…” (David Foster Wallace)
“…he was trying to say a single word that I, with my Ancient as well as Modern Greek, can identify, though I have never encountered it: teratophilia, erotic attraction to monsters.” (Kingsley Amis)
“The teratical bulb of night, sprouted from our baseness and our self-denials. . .” (Aimé Césaire, translated by A. James Arnold & Clayton Eshleman)
“Barnum’s genius was in his recognition that people would stand in line and pay for all manner of curiosities— historical, zoological, or teratological.” (Stephen T. Asma)
“She was afflicted with teratophobia, an unusual but well-documented condition: literally, a fear of bearing a monster, a fear of something horrible growing inside you.” (Paul Bowdring)
“Gormon had been weaned on teratogenetic drugs; he was a monster, handsome in his way, but a monster nevertheless, a Changeling, outside the laws and customs of man…” (Robert Silverberg)
“…the occasional hormone-secreting tumour or teratoma — rare, beautiful cancers…” (Peter Goldsworthy)
“…the carrion-eating teratornises were already circling overhead, each borne on wings as wide as the main yard of a caravel.” (Gene Wolfe)
“…the girl, Shar, a frustrated princess escaped from a tower. And the others, the teratological freaks, seemed part of a dusty mythology.” (Bryce Walton)