HPL Dictionary Corner: 'The Nameless City'

Two words from 'The Nameless City' which I sort of get from the context but have never looked up the precise definition of:


"curvilinear"

This describes certain carvings on the weird buildings the narrator explores. I was hoping for something neat and simple when I looked online: there is a simple version - "contained by or consisting of a curved line or lines" - but there is a much more precise, and very Lovecraftian, definition which describes 'curvilinear coordinates' thusly: "In geometry, curvilinear coordinates are a coordinate system for Euclidean space in which the coordinate lines may be curved. These coordinates may be derived from a set of Cartesian coordinates by using a transformation that is locally invertible at each point." 

"Euclidian" itself is a favoured HPL adjective: I was only brave enough to look at the first description of this I came upon: "corresponding to the geometry of ordinary experience". 

So, curved lines then! That'll do me!


and
"paleogean"

(as in the species the narrator uncovers evidence of). This refers, I discovered, to a span of 43 million years in the very early stages of Earth's development. Dinosaurs apparently existed only a mere 1 million years into this period before they were wiped out - perhaps by a meteor fragment containing a Colour Out of Space?

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