I have access to the OED, and the info in your first paragraph is correct; you’re pretty much on target throughout, in fact.
Well, we could push the etymology of it a bit. If we take “warlock” as a derivation from the O.E. waerloga in the oathbreaking sense, it’s conceivable that its meaning could have diverged at some point, with the magic version losing its negative connotation and coming to mean a person who could release others from oaths–an important thing in a society in which oaths can be magically binding. Such a person might be needed in order for a couple to divorce, for example. If someone had occasion to leave a group that has membership oaths–similar to a nun being released from her vows, say–it would make sense if the leader were the one with the power to unbind them. A similar function might apply to magically binding contracts or treaties the group might make.
In this manner, the term could come to be used as an official title, denoting the individual with the authority to bind or loose members or the organization as a whole. If such a title were commonly used in, say, dueling societies, it might also come to denote a champion duelist, since the leaders of such groups would presumably excel at combative magic. This would account for both modern usages: the formal title denoting a leader and the informal term of respect for a skilled duelist.
There’s more handwaving in this post than in a whole beginner Charms class.
An explanation I would buy into more is to say creating a potion was a ritual as much as adding precise amounts of ingredients.
They should have some mumbo-jumbo like take four pumpkin seeds with your right hand and with your left throw one away to represent the sister that didn’t make it. If you just added three pumpkin seeds or tossed one away without knowing why then your potion turns to soup.
And it’s that intent that is the difference between doing things and magicking things. When ordinary people do things it doesn’t matter what there intent is.
I read that in Bender’s voice.
You were SUPPOSED to.
Sounded like McGonagall to me.
Doesn’t “witch” (or “wicce”) also come from a root meaning “wise”, though? That would support “witch” and “wizard” being used as the male and female versions of the same thing.
The assumption that you must be a real wizard to brew potions is used in a fanfic I’m reading that puts a D&D (munchkin) wizard into the the HP world. (The protagonist has to figure out how to pull it off without HP magic, without knowing what the potion is supposed to do.) And that guy is pretty particular on getting all his data correct. (He even rolls for the D&D wizard in battle.) It’s a comedic take of how each book would be changed. The first one is called Harry Potter and the Natural 20.
The guy who wrote Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality recommends it.
Just be at there’s no specific Rhymer rule on against reading fanfic doesn’t mean the other rules don’t imply such a prohibition.
According to Wiktionary (again, no OED here), it ultimately derives from the Proto-Germanic “wikjo”, which means “necromancer” or “waker of the dead”. Nothing about being wise that I can see.