# Words you didn't know you knew from sword&sorcery **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 5, 2011, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-didnt-know-you-knew-from-sword-sorcery/566458 "2011-01-05T04:40:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![kushiel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbce88/32.png) [@kushiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kushiel)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2011, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-didnt-know-you-knew-from-sword-sorcery/566458/61 "2011-01-08T18:20:07Z")
> [@Tom\_Scud](#): > > I think “drow” is D&D-specific. Ooooh, this makes a little more sense and points to my copyright issue theory. I was specifically thinking of Record of Lodoss War, which started out as a D&D campaign. Thing is, because it was based off of the Japanese materials, I don’t know how “drow” was translated. Theoretically when it made the jump to English, it should have taken terms from the English materials, but to do so, would imply it was officially sanctioned, which it is not. Also, for all I talk about D&D above, I know very little about it. I was going to cite Drizzt as a non-D&D use, but Wikipedia saved me from that embarrassment! :o ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2011, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-didnt-know-you-knew-from-sword-sorcery/566458/62 "2011-01-09T02:37:52Z")
> [@sachertorte](#): > > And I’m baffled that your father is unfamiliar with the word familiar – if not the witchy definition, then at least the more common one? Am I missing something? Have I been misspelling familiar all these years? Sorry, was I writing confusingly? Of course my dad is familiar with the sort of familiar used in everyday conversation. It’s the witch’s familiar he seemed not to have heard of. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2011, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-didnt-know-you-knew-from-sword-sorcery/566458/63 "2011-01-09T02:38:58Z")
> [@Tengu](#): > > [Knights in Charlemagne’s court, the word probably deriving from a Latin word for a type of government official.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paladin) Richard Boone, Have Gun Will travel 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2011, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-didnt-know-you-knew-from-sword-sorcery/566458/64 "2011-01-17T00:35:32Z")
Update: another restaurant, another hanged man. He got ‘acolyte’! I’m impressed. ‘Glyph’ was a bit trickier, he was pretty much just calling random letters there. I had to remind him about hieroglyphics and such. I almost did ‘phylactery’, but before we could get started it turned into a whole discussion of, " ‘Phylactery’ really means _what_? Why do they call [these](http://blog.beliefnet.com/windowsanddoors/280px-Tefillin.jpg) phylacteries, then? Sounds like a Greek word. Is that what the Greeks though tefillin was, Magic Jew Hats? Sheesh." ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2011, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-didnt-know-you-knew-from-sword-sorcery/566458/65 "2011-01-17T03:12:33Z")
Quoth **Wendell Wagner** : > [@](#): > > Please, I don’t mean the following question as an insult. I’m genuinely baffled by your description of how you showed your father that it really was a word. Doesn’t anybody own dictionaries anymore? That’s how traditionally one shows someone that something is a word. Even if someone is going to tell me that no one owns books anymore but only looks up things online, wouldn’t the proper procedure here be to go to an online dictionary? One could look it up as follows: > > [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/scry](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/scry) > > I would be dubious too if someone tried to defend a word by referring to something that’s a comic. I guess that’s what Start of Darkness is anyway. It’s apparently available mostly online with some of it only available in print: What do you think dictionaries do in the first place? All that a word being in the dictionary means is that the dictionary editors have found it in actual usage. By pointing out the usage directly, you’re just cutting out the middle-man. **Jophiel** , I had a very similar experience. I got ahold of an old (i.e., older than the edition I was playing at the time) D&D monster book, and saw that some monster or other had the listing “Psionic powers: Nil”. I knew that “nil” meant nothing, but I figured that in this context, it must be the name of a psionic power with a disintegrate-like effect. On the mispronunciation issue, it’s only on this board that I learned the proper, two-syllable pronunciation of “tarrasque”. You wouldn’t guess by looking at him that he’s French. And back to the original original topic of the thread, I once got some relatives upset with me while playing Scrabble because “thane” wasn’t a word. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2011, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-didnt-know-you-knew-from-sword-sorcery/566458/66 "2011-01-17T11:31:56Z")
Chronos writes: \> What do you think dictionaries do in the first place? All that a word being in the \> dictionary means is that the dictionary editors have found it in actual usage. By \> pointing out the usage directly, you’re just cutting out the middle-man. Yeah, but the comic book writer could have made up the word, or he could have misspelled the word he was trying for. When you shown somebody something in the dictionary, you’re showing them that it’s a word that’s been around for awhile. In any case, my natural reaction would have been to grab a dictionary and show the person who’s questioning the word that it’s given in there. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2011, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-didnt-know-you-knew-from-sword-sorcery/566458/67 "2011-01-17T11:47:54Z")
“Weird”, used in the sense of fate or destiny. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2011, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-didnt-know-you-knew-from-sword-sorcery/566458/68 "2011-01-17T11:50:44Z")
I wrote: \> . . . When you shown somebody . . . I meant: \> . . . When you’ve shown somebody . . . ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2011, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-didnt-know-you-knew-from-sword-sorcery/566458/69 "2011-01-17T18:33:52Z")
> [@](#): > > “Weird”, used in the sense of fate or destiny. That one I learned in high school English class, though to be fair, it was while we were studying _Beowulf_. Another one I remembered is “dweomer”. Though I’m not sure I’ve ever actually used it, in word games or otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2011, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-didnt-know-you-knew-from-sword-sorcery/566458/70 "2011-01-17T22:25:42Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Chronos writes: > > \> What do you think dictionaries do in the first place? All that a word being in the > \> dictionary means is that the dictionary editors have found it in actual usage. By > \> pointing out the usage directly, you’re just cutting out the middle-man. > > Yeah, but the comic book writer could have made up the word, or he could have misspelled the word he was trying for. When you shown somebody something in the dictionary, you’re showing them that it’s a word that’s been around for awhile. In any case, my natural reaction would have been to grab a dictionary and show the person who’s questioning the word that it’s given in there. Ah, well. The dictionary lying around my living room is the _Random House Unabridged_, full of useful everyday words like “floccinaucinihilipilification”. In this case, use in a comic book would be _way_ more informative than dictionary citations. ---
**Author:** ![Apollyon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/apollyon/32/4238_2.png) [@Apollyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollyon)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2011, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-didnt-know-you-knew-from-sword-sorcery/566458/71 "2011-01-18T01:27:50Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > Though Gygax created the concept of drow as dark elves, [the word seems to have its roots in Scottish dialects,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drow_%28Dungeons_%26_Dragons%29#Publication_history) where “trow” (or “drow”) was used for evil sprites. I’d got a little further and say that pre-D&D _Drow_ did mean “dark elf” or _dökkálfar_, but that the visual concepts now associated with Drow are the work of Gygax and co, and the old drow / trow might have been more similar to dwarves or (Norse) trolls. > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > “Weird”, used in the sense of fate or destiny. Isn’t that one usually spelt _Wyrd_? To the OP, another from the sword and sorcery vocab: Homunculus [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-didnt-know-you-knew-from-sword-sorcery/566458.md?page=3)