saw this in a book i'm reading:

"...a ruthless, chthonic knowledge of male vulnerability...."

i thought chthonic was a typo, but atomica readily piped up with a definition. never seen it before, so i thought i'd share, since it's such a neat-o spelling =)

Some of the autochthons of AWADtalk are proud of their chthonic grins when tormenting tyro types.

some of us are autochthonous and some of us are heterochthonous....

Piers Anthony wrote a bad novel called "Chthon", then dug even further into the dirt and came up with another called "Phthon". I guess it's true: He does have tunnel vision.

Piers Anthony wrote a bad novel, repeatedly.

[there, i've saved you remembering titles]

dug even further into the dirt and came up with another called "Phthon"

Exposing to all and sundry my dilettantish (I'd say encyclopedic, but tsuwm may, to his sadness, trump me here) knowledge of bad sci-fi, I believe the sequel to "Chthon" was called "Phthor," from some superficial resemblance of the main character to the Norse Thunderer.

Phthor is the second in the Aton series and sequel to Piers
Anthony's first published novel, Chthon, less intricately
structured and less complicated in plot, but still quite dark and
ugly in theme and detail. Rather than flashbacks and
flashforwards, it has a Y outline, with the stem the initial story and
the ends alternate futures, neither of which is acceptable to
Aton’s son Arlo.

From what I read of the blurbs at the site, I'm glad I never wasted time on the originals.