Why “bodach” is a great word
A grim, wizened bogeyman of Gaelic folklore, an old man who brings misfortune, borrowed from Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic *bodach*, meaning 'old man.' Unlike the *banshee*, whose keening is a specific herald of death, or the *leprechaun*, a solitary trickster bound to his treasure, the bodach is a vaguer, more pervasive shadow—a general harbinger of doom. He is the scratching at the window on a windless night, the sudden cold spot in a familiar hallway, the hunched silhouette always receding at the edge of a misty field. He embodies the dread that the mundane world is paper-thin, and something ancient and spiteful is pressing through from the other side.