Word: Nemesis

It's been a good long while since I did one of these, and this time I'll go for a slightly different approach -- I'll let Brick Top do the talking. First, a word of warning: If you are scared of profanities, you should find something else to do.

Word: Obsolete Words

This list of obsolete words in the English language needs to be spread. I came by it on the blog Like Being Read To From Dictionaries, who in turn came by it from Grognardia.

My favourites are:

Jargogle, v. - to confuse, jumble.

Ludibrious, adj. - apt to be a subject of jest or mockery.

Sanguinolency, noun - addiction to bloodshed.

I confess I delictate in corrades like this one, even if it causes perissology.

Word: Undead vs. Soulless

There's been a debate in game about whether or not the fomori and the minions of the Ordo Ultima Thule are undead or not. Just to have this on record, here's the official BoW-definition of the two terms.

Undead: Someone who's body has died, but who's soul is still bound to the body. They are technically dead, but the soul has not passed back into Creation. E.g. a zombie, a vampire.

Soulless: Someone who have given up their soul, or have had their soul snatched away by some means. They are technically alive, but they possess no soul. E.g. a Hollow Man, a Forfeited.




[Picture source: Edvard Munch on Art History Library; 2 ExileHazard on DeviantART]

Word: Horde

Origin: The word 'horde' stems from ordu (pronunciation:/'oɾdu/), a Turkish word meaning army. The roots of the word goes back to Genghis Kahn's highly sophisticated organization of his armies, based on the decimal system. In today's military vernacular, an ordu would be called an army corps or a field army.


The Mongol military of the 13th century was made up more or less every able-bodied male between 14 and 60, divided into the tjumen 10,000 strong, divided into the regiment, or mingghan of a 1,000 men, further divided into companies, or zuut, of 100, and finally, the  groups of 10, the arav.  Two to five tjumen would operate together as an ordu, or horde.


Using this system, a horde would count between 20,000 and 50,000.


Now, if only there was a way to answer the age old question: how many boards could the Mongol hordes hoard if the Mongol hordes got bored...


Source: Wikipedia, The Realm of the Mongols, and Elite Series #30, Atilla and the Nomad Hordes, Osprey Publishing.

Word: Log

(As in Ship's Log)


Special bonus-word: Knot


Definition: In the early Age of Sail (very setting-relevant), navigation was still in its infancy. The most high-tech instrument on a ship was the compass, but that only gave the navigator the bearing. To find the longitude, the sailors would use a knotted rope attached to log -- at set intervals, the log would be lowered into the water, and the mariner would count the knots as the log drifted away from the ship (we still measure nautical speed in knots). This would be recorded meticulously in a journal (the ship's log). Using these data the navigator would find the longitude of his intended destination, then set a course by the compass.


Source: The Savage World of Solomon Kane, Pinnacle Entertainment Group; and Classic Encyclopedia 

Word: Mythocracy

Definition 1: "[...] an exceptionally internally unified type of consciousness [giving] the mind no chance to grasp onto reality; instead, it replaces reality with names and a self-fulfilling repetition of shamanistic incantations. [...] The existence of such a mythological consciousness presupposes the functioning of an alter ego in the form of an administrative system solely capable of expropriating and disposing of all that it does not itself produce."

My definition: A society ruled by an organization of supernatural creatures, e.g. the Wolf Lords of Draccia or the Order State of the Ordo Hermetica. In such a society, political power is derived from metaphysical capability, rather than merit or family ties.

Source for Definition 1: Ellen E. Berry & Anesa Miller-Pogacar, Re-entering the sign: articulating new Russian culture, Google Books

Word: Gun

Origin: Gunpowder weapons first appeared in Western Europe in the 1320's, and the first English text to use the term gun is dated 1339. However, words like gunne, gonne, et al goes back further, describing mechanical siege engines. According to Bert S. Hall, this stems from the practise of naming such engines with the Old Norse female name Gunhilda (gunn-r means war and hild-r means battle). Later the word gun became intermixed or confused with the word gin (from engine) and was used as a generic term meaning any sort of siege engine.


Source: Bert S. Hall, Weapons & Warfare in Renaissance Europe, Baltimore 1997

Word: Happiness

Origin: Happiness as referring to joy and... well, happiness, is a relatively new concept. Originally it meant being lucky. The word happy is derived from 'to happen', or 'happenstance', as in good luck. A man who had experienced good fortune was said to be a happy man.

Source: Herbert Bronstein, Happiness, and Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary

Word: Hello

Origin: The use of "hello" as a greeting on the telephone is credited to Tomas Edison (Alexander Graham Bell wanted the more naval "Ahoy!").  The word itself comes from the Old High German "halâ", which was, apparently, used when hailing ferrymen.

Hello appeared in litterature as early as 1833, e.g. The Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David Crockett, of West Tennessee.

Sources: The BBC television program Qi and Wikipedia

Word: Red Herring

Definition: A false lead.

Origin 1: The commonly accepted explanation is that when training scent hounds the practice was to drag smoked or cured fish, not neccesarily a herring, along the ground to create a trail of scent for the animal to follow. As the dog got more proficient and started following the much fainter scent of an animal the trainer would drag a red herring across the trail. If the dog could ignore the strong smell of the herring and follow the original scent it was deemed fit for the hunt.
 
Origin 2: According to Wikipedia, Origin 1 is a fallacy, and the practice of using a red herring to train dogs is questioned. The idiom reportedly comes from an article published 14 February, 1807 in the polemical Weekly Political Register where the journalist William Cobbet criticised the English press for mistakenly having reported the defeat of Napoleon.
 
Source: Wikipedia and The Free Dictionary

Word: Prosit

Origin: Latin prodesse, meaning: be useful, be advantageous, benefit, profit.

Meaning: In Norwegian it is said after someone sneezes, and it's origin hails back to the belief that the sneeze is an omen, and by saying prosit it can be turned to good. Alternately, there is the belief that when a person sneezes the soul is trying to leave the body, only by countering it with a timely "prosit" can this be avoided.

The Germans use prosit as a toast, by the way.


Source: Wikipedia

Word: Cabal

This time I've got two origins, one unarguably true, the other more circumstantial.

Origin 1: The true origin is, of course, the Hebrew word kabbalah, litterally meaning 'receiving'. It is a dicipline and a school of thought concerned with mystic Judaism. Cabal reffers to a group of people, bound together by a common cause, often involving secrecy.

Origin 2: Another origin, while probably not etymologically accurate, is the five members of the Privy Council of Charles II of England, Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley-Cooper, and Lauderdale. These men held power from 1668 to approximately 1674.

Origin 1 is the true one -- the second, while it did put the word into the English vocabulary, would not have had the impact, or meaning, it did without the former.

Source 1:
Wikipedia

Source 2:
Denis MacShane, Globalising Hatred, the new antisemitism, Phoenix, 2009
Wikipedia

Word: Jingoism

It's been a while since the last one, and since the scheduled program is on hold...

Definition: Fierce, aggressive patriotism.

Origin: In the last half of the 19th Century, the Brits were rather beligerent towards the Russians, and as they were rather full of themselves (having defeated Napoleon, as well as pantloads of people on all continents). In those days, there was a popular song with the following lines, "We don't want to fight, but by jingo if we do; We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too."

Source: Bothwell, Robert, The Penguin History of Canada, Penguin Canada, 2007

Wiki

Word: Bugger

Another nice one...

Origin: In the good old days, the routine charge against heretics was that of sofomy. Cathars and Templars were accused of this, as were the Bogomils. Now, the Bogomils originally came from Bulgaria, and the French referred to them as bougres (Bulgars). And from this, the English got bugger. So, in fact, bugger actually means heretical Bulgarian sodomite, or something to that effect.

Source: Barret, David V., A Brief History of Secret Societies, Robinson edn, 2007

Word: Gibberish

I like words. Alot. So since this is my blog, and since that means I get to do what I want with it, I am creating a new column. When I stumble over a particularly neat word, or better, a particularly neat explanation or origin of a word, I'll post it here. How about that, huh?

So, without further ado, gentle reader, I give you...

Origin: The Arab alchemist and mathematician Jabir ibn Hayyan, also known as Geber (c. 721-c. 815 AD) was one of the most influential men in medieval Christian science. His works were so shrouded in allegorical symbolism that 'gibberish' entered the vocabulary.

Source: Barret, David V., A Brief History of Secret Societies, Robinson edn, 2007