Tag: suffix

Symbolomania – The obsession with symbolism over reality

By all means, accuse me of inventing too many words with the suffix ‘-mania’, but I do find it to be infinitely useful.

The year is 2019. The month is May. Fans of fantasy all around the world gather to watch the final episode of Game of Thrones.

Daenerys Targaryen has, inexplicably, gone mad. Jon Snow decides to kill her. Drogon, her dragon, after seeing this, decides to attack … the Iron Throne.

It makes no sense. Dragons in this world, while unable to speak or communicate telepathically as they can in some other fantasy worlds, are supposedly ferociously intelligent. There is no way that Drogon doesn’t know that it was Jon Snow who killed Daenerys. Dragons are also vicious, and rather indifferent to humans other than the ones they are bound to in some way. Drogon would kill Jon Snow. That would make sense.

But instead the dragon attacks … the chair. Why? It’s a chair. What does it mean to a dragon? Unless of course, Drogon somehow knows what the chair symbolises – the desire for power, and all the infighting it causes. Drogon, in this moment, gains a meta-level understanding of the world he’s in. He momentarily becomes the audience, and that’s why he attacks the symbol and impetus of the show.

For a show that is supposed to be realist, this is ridiculous. It only happens because the writers think it’s profound, and that profundity takes precedence over physical and logical realism. It is one of the many reasons why the show is considered a car crash, and why people hardly ever talk about it now, despite it being one of the most popular shows in the world for about a decade.

In the subsequent years, I have seen this obsession with symbols many other times. I have seen people be obsessed with the symbolism of something – what they think it means – regardless of the actual logical, physical, or logistical consequences of something, regardless of reality.

I won’t enumerate all of the examples, as that would make this post unbearably long, but I will focus on one: royalty.

I am a royalist. It’s actually one of the few ‘-ist’ words I will actually apply to myself. I’ll save a full explanation of why I’m a royalist for another post, but it’s worth saying that being a royalist does not mean that you support or are in favour of every single thing every single member of the royal family does all the time. It means you are in favour of the concept of royalty.

In any discussion on royalty, one of the arguments against it you’ll hear quite often and quite early on is ‘I don’t think anyone should be considered “better” than anyone else.’ – in other words, they see the meaning of ‘royalty’ as being that some people in society should be higher up, higher in status, more important, intrinsically more moral people – better.

It’s a weird argument, because I don’t think anyone who is a royalist today actually believes that members of the royal family are better, more worthy, than the rest of us. I think royalists just see the royal family as inheritors of an ancient tradition who have a life-long duty to preserve a substantial proportion of our cultural heritage. That does not make them better, or more worthy. They are not necessarily more moral people, nor should they escape justice when justice is needed. Now sure, we should expect higher standards of them than we do of most people, since they are the inheritors of this legacy, and the performers of its rituals, but this does not mean they are necessarily better.

I think the people who see royalty as some kind of status of intrinsic superiority are obsessed with what they believe the symbolism of royalty is rather than the practical, real effects that we see in society as a result of them (or even, indeed, a truer, actual symbolism, rather than a false interpretation). In that sense they are the same as the writers of Game of Thrones (and the very small number of people who actually liked that final episode).

So I find I need a word to describe this phenomenon. I choose symbolomania – the obsession with symbols or symbolism – usually a perceived symbolism – over reality or over a more logical understanding of something.

Words of Killing – Words that end with the Latin suffix ‘-cide’

Continuing my series of posts about different etymological families of words, let’s look at the words that end with ‘-cide’.

Once again, these words may be of particular use to fantasy and science fiction authors, like me, as rather a lot of murder happens in these genres. Words like ‘regicide’ – the killing of a king – ‘deicide’ – the killing of a god – or ‘tyrannicide’ – the killing of a tyrant – are obviously useful.

The full list of words that end with ‘-cide’ is quite long, and many of them are technical or scientific, so I won’t cover all of them here – I’ll just look at the ones that might be called poetically interesting.

WordOriginMeaning
suicidefrom Latin sui, ‘of oneself’, and cidium, ‘a killing’, ultimately from caedere, ‘to slay’the killing of oneself
homicidefrom Latin homo, ‘man’, ‘person’the killing of another person
feminicidefrom Latin femina, ‘woman’the killing of a woman; ‘femicide’ is also used, but this seems to be a needless contraction
uxoricidefrom Latin uxor, ‘wife’the killing of one’s wife
patricidefrom Latin pater, ‘father’the killing of one’s father
matricidefrom Latin mater, ‘mother’the killing of one’s mother
fratricidefrom Latin frater, ‘brother’the killing of one’s brother
sororicidefrom Latin soror, ‘sister’the killing of one’s sister
senicidefrom Latin senex, ‘old man’the killing of an old man
regicidefrom Latin rex, ‘king’the killing of a king
tyrannicidefrom Greek tyrannos, ‘lord’, ‘master’the killing of a tyrant
vaticidefrom Latin vates, ‘prophet’, ‘seer’, ‘diviner’the killing of a prophet or seer – potentially a very useful word for fiction
deicidefrom Latin deus, ‘god’the killing of a god
genocidefrom Greek genos, ‘race’, ‘kind’a fairly modern word, less than 100 years old, meaning ‘the killing of an ethnic group’; this word is used incorrectly more than it is used correctly
feticidefrom Latin fetus, ‘fetus’the killing of an unborn child
filicidefrom Latin filius, ‘son’, filia, ‘daughter’the killing of one’s son or daughter
prolicidefrom Latin proles, ‘offspring’the killing of one’s children
floricidefrom Latin flos, ‘flower’the killing of flowers
felicidefrom Latin feles, ‘cat’the killing of a cat – a grave crime
vulpicidefrom Latin vulpes, ‘fox’the killing of a fox
ceticidefrom Latin cetus, ‘whale’, ‘sea monster’the killing of a whale, the killing of a sea monster – possibly a very useful word
avicidefrom Latin avis, ‘bird’the killing of a bird
libricidefrom Latin liber, ‘book’the killing of books
verbicidefrom Latin verbum, ‘word’the killing of a word, usually by perversion of its original or proper meaning
linguicidefrom Latin lingua, ‘language’the killing of a language
temporicidefrom Latin tempus, ‘time’the killing of time – potentially a very fun word to use
liberticidefrom Latin libertas, ‘freedom’the killing of freedom, liberty
legicidefrom Latin lex, ‘law’the killing of laws

Words of Creation – Words that end with the Greek suffix ‘-poeia’

A few weeks ago, I came across the word ‘mythopoeic’. What a nice-looking word! Dictionaries give its meaning as ‘pertaining to the creation of myths’, but I sense it has a true meaning that is a bit subtler than that.

It comes from Greek mythos – obviously – meaning ‘myth’, ‘story’, ‘thought’, ‘discourse’, and Greek poiein, meaning ‘to create’ – from which we also get the word ‘poet’. Who’d’ve thought – the word ‘poet’ literally just means ‘one who creates’. (I guess that means we’re all poets now. Oh dear.)

From ‘mythopoeic’ we can get to ‘mythopoeia’, which is ‘the creation of myths’. It didn’t occur to me, at first, that there were other words ending with ‘-poeia’, but there are, and these form an etymological family of words all pertaining to creation.

As always with this series of posts, first I will list words ending with this suffix that I’ve found in dictionaries. (It may not be an exhaustive list.)

WordMeaning
pharmacopoeia‘the making of medicine’
logopoeiaThe creation of words – not in the sense of coining new words, but in the sense that a word is formed over time by its usage in different contexts, and the associations it gains through its usages. (This word may be worth a blog post of its own.)
phanopoeiaThe creation of images – particularly within the mind, the visual imagination.
melopoeiaThe creation of sounds – again particularly in the sense of writing that builds the idea of a sound in the mind.
prosopopoeiaThe putting of words into the mouths of others – what a great word. (A complex etymology.)
onomatopoeiaThe famous one – ‘the formation of words or names by imitation of natural sounds’.

Most of these ‘-poeia’ words are quite grand, so perhaps any new words made with the ending should be similarly grand. Below I’ve thrown together some new words that could be made with this ending, but they’re a bit literal.

WordMeaningAdjectival Form
geopoeia‘the creation of the Earth’geopoeic
rhabdopoeia‘the creation of wands / staffs’ – a great one for fantasy – a person who creates wands or staffs (like Ollivander) could be a ‘rhabdopoet’ – particularly in reference to the magical, rather than mechanical, aspects of creating a wandrhabdopoeic
astropoeia‘the creation of stars’ – for extra grandeur of concept, this could be used for metaphorical stars – i.e., celebrities – ‘the process by which a person becomes a celebrity and the crafting of their public image’ (although perhaps this rather removes grandeur than adds it)astropoeic
oneiropoeia‘the creation of dreams’ – again, could be used for literal dreams, or this word could be used to refer to how aspirations are instilled in the people of a given society – i.e., the process by which the American Dream is instilledoneiropoeic
arithmopoeia‘the creation of numbers’ – could be used to refer to the process by which mathematicians deduce that a different class of number (such as imaginary and complex numbers) is neededarithmopoeic
chronopoeia‘the creation of time’ – could be used to refer to how different events and activities create the perception of time in the mind – i.e., a very boring activity that makes time go slow is chronopoeicchronopoeic
sophopoeia‘the creation of wisdom’ – could be used to refer to the methods and environments that create wisdom within those going through educationsophopoeic
alethopoeia‘the creation of truth’ – could be used to refer to how governmental and media institutions try to ‘create’ a ‘truth’ that may well be different from actual, objective truth (although perhaps this is a rather grim usage of such a grand word)alethopoeic

New Project: A Dictionary of British Place Names

I have started a new project today. In short, it is a small web-app giving information on the etymology of British place names. I’ve made it a sub-site of my main website – you can view it here: http://benjamintmilnes.com/dictionary-of-british-place-names/#/.

I decided to do this project quite spontaneously this morning. The idea’s been floating around in my head for a few days or so. I’m normally quite reluctant to start new projects of this kind nowadays – I have a lot of projects – too many, really – and each new project takes time away from the others. However, this project is quite valuable for the world-building for On The Subject Of Trolls, and it is relatively simple to do, so I decided to start it.

Amazingly, I’ve managed to get it to a ‘finished’ state in just a few hours. Now, when I say ‘finished’ here, I don’t necessarily mean absolutely complete in all ways. I find it useful to distinguish between different kinds of ‘finished’. A part of this project is actually researching and writing out the etymology for all or lots of British place names. (I may not do absolutely all British place names – I may only do a few hundred or a few thousand in total.) This is something that is very difficult to do all in one go – this is something that’s better to do gradually over time, so I don’t include this in what I mean by ‘finished’. Similarly, with any web-app, there are often hundreds of features that you could program into it – I don’t include these in ‘finished’ either. With projects like this, I generally consider them finished when I have something that I can put online, that works (even if it only has a limited number of features), that looks polished, and that contains well-formed data (even if it’s only a small amount of data). In the case of this project, I have managed to create 11 data files for place names, create the compiler (which takes those data files and outputs a JSON file that the web-app effectively uses as its database), and create a polished front-end.

So the web-app is now online and available. It describes the etymology of various British place names. In future you will be able to search for place names that have a particular suffix or that have a particular element in them. There are other fun features that it could have too – like rendering a map of Britain using the names that places had in a given century. It only contains a few entries so far, but I will add to that over time.

This is a very fun project to do. I have liked etymology for a long time – I can’t remember when it was that I started looking things up on etymonline.com several times a day – probably about seven or eight years ago – but it has been a fascination of mine for a long time. Place names is an area of etymology that is somewhat lacking online – it’s fun being able to create something new that’s useful.