Observations on words

English is a great language.

Not the least of which because it borrowed so much of the good stuff from other languages.

Topology and topography need to be supplemented by topomythy, place-lore, not just an area knowledge but the stories of a locale; similarly mythography, the charting of legends, which keeps track of the ley lines and so on, and its linguistic dual graphomythy, the lore of mapmaking.

You got through this statement without using the word geo." Why?

Geomancy is a name given to the use of the Earth's energies, for magic or just tracking across the landscape in an intuitive way. However, it's also used sometimes by dowsers who use their instruments to divine where the ley-lines and other underground sources of Earth-energy are present. I'm not sure whether I agree that those today both dowsing the lines and writing about them ought to call themselves geomancers, but they do, and because some of them are my friends I'm not yet prepared to argue them out of it. :)

Now I'm angry that I've managed to forget the term for divination by entrails. *sighs*

Speaking of word-magic, around the time I was proofing kaidevis's Occult Swordplay text, I realized that minus one letter, it could become Occult Wordplay. A concept I like a great deal -- even though it has too many possibilities to actually be put down into words (and I tried!). Ironic, that. :) Or maybe not, since what is occult is hidden, and therefore can't be properly written down. ;)

"Anthropomancy" has a familiar ring -- that was probably it.

Amusingly, and taking this full circle, I note on the same page that "ichthyomancy" is divination using fish -- or fish entrails.

Ichthyology, or ichtheology?

What if the carp was channeling God? I'm not sure I have the linguistic werewithal to come up with a word for that.

I'm not content with either ichthyoglossia (good try, though) -- if it means the same thing as glossolalia, that's usually wordless gibberish (which Hebrew (even warnings of the end-times) isn't, at least not to most of us). And ichthyophany is better -- since if the carp were channeling the voice of God that would constitute a "showing."

Perhaps there's a good word for those people who stand on streetcorners portending that "the end is near." That could fit into it someplace.

I can't think of a good way to explicitly describe a fish prophesying the end of the world without saying something like ichthyoeschatoglossia, and that doesn't even guarantee divine intervention - and this way, it's starting to sound like German

It occurs to me, as a Pisces with a German last name, that perhaps I should start applying such terminology to myself. ;) I tried reading these sentences aloud to my boyfriend, Devin, and it mostly just in a lot of me laughing and trying to get through words. Not that one should be very serious when discussing a doomsaying fish.

Perhaps we should refer to it as an ichthyoglossic phenomenon, and leave open the question of whether it was in fact an epiichthic theophany, or simply some eschatological theomania on the part of the fishmongers?

We discussed this a bit (not in such words) over a late lunch with tyrsalvia and chrisla. Whether it was a true event, or whether this pair of butchers had cooked up (ha) a scheme to tell the world about a fish that portented the apocalypse. It doesn't make any sense that they would actually hear the fish speaking with the voice of God and then kill it, nor does it make any sense that they would concoct a fake story to gain attention, when the fish had been killed and sold nearly two months prior. The entire scheme makes no sense no matter how you look at it. I suppose turning it into a semantic and linguistic exercise is as good an outcome as any. :)

(OK, I admit that the last sentence was simply silly and wholly gratuitous. I think I like ichthyophany.)

I see no harm in that!

*groan* :)

No, that wasn't it. On the other hand, those are fantastic words, especially haruspex (wasn't familiar with it until just now). Too bad we don't have friendly neighborhood haruspex (haruspexes? haruspexi?) anymore. I hate it when words die out like that.

Ohhh... interesting:

Main Entry: ha·rus·pex
Etymology: Latin, from haru- (akin to chordE gut, cord) + -spex, from specere to look

Main Entry: hara-kiri
Etymology: Japanese harakiri, from hara belly + kiri cutting

Probably these words aren't related, but I'm equally fascinated when words from entirely different languages sound similar and mean similar things.