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
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.
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 phylacteries, then? Sounds like a Greek word. Is that what the Greeks though tefillin was, Magic Jew Hats? Sheesh."
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.
> 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.
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.
Isn’t that one usually spelt Wyrd?
To the OP, another from the sword and sorcery vocab: Homunculus
