as small as a world and as large as alone, Wizards can't lie in the Young Wizards universe,...

4:35pm April 8, 2015

quinfirefrorefiddle asked: Wizards can't lie in the Young Wizards universe, or they shouldn't. Does this mean being carefully accurate when cursing? No incorrectly gendered comments, no calling something what it isn't, etc? Are there wizard-specific curses to help with that?

dduane:

Hmm.
Well, best place to start is by defining our terms. Where’d I put the OED?
(To save time, I’m leaving out the meaning-specific etymological citations that the OED provides for each entry.)
So. The noun form of “curse” first. General etymology: “Late OE curs, of unknown origin: no word of similar form and sense is known in Teutonic, Romanic or Celtic.” Hmm, isn’t it interesting how the word seems to sort of come out of nowhere?
The main meanings (and it’s interesting that the word has only a couple of columns in the OED: normally the shorter words are the ones with the longer entries):
(1) An utterance consigning, or supposed or intended to consign, (a person or thing) to spiritual or temporal evil, the vengeance of the deity, the blasting of malignant fate, etc. It may be uttered by the deity, or by persons supposed to speak in his name, or to be listened to by him.
(a) A formal ecclesiastical censure or anathema: a sentence of excommunication. (As in cursing “by bell, book & candle”.)
(2) Without implication of the effect: The utterance of a malediction with invocation or adjuration of the deity; a profane oath, an imprecation.
(3) An object of cursing or execration: an accursed thing or person.
(4) The evil inflicted by divine (or supernatural) power in response to an imprecation, or by way of retributive punishment.
(5) Attributive and combinatory forms such as curse-blasted, curse-scarred (noting here with interest the unusual formation “curse-meet”, formed after the erroneous “help-meet” for “help meet” or the modern “help-mate”. Huh.)
And the verb form:
(1) To utter against persons or things words which consign, or are intended or supposed to consign, them to evil spiritual or temporal, etc.
(a) Said of the deity or supernatural power.
(b) Said of persons claiming to speak in the divine name, esp. officers of the church: To pronounce a formal curse against: to anathematize, excommunicate, consign to perdition.
(2) Hence (without implication of the effect): To imprecate or invoke divine vengeance or evil fate upon: to denounce with adjuration of the divine name: to pour maledictions upon: to swear at.
(3) To speak impiously against, to rail profanely at (the deity, fate, destiny, etc.), to blaspheme.
(4) To utter curses: to swear profanely in anger or irritation.
(5) To afflict with such evils or calamities as are the consequences or indications of divine wrath or the malignancy of fate: to blast.
Wizards do occasionally have opportunity to get involved with a number of these options. Against some of them, wizards are strictly enjoined – for example, intentional malediction of the “May a truck hit you when you next cross the street” type. When working in a language routinely used to define or redefine physical reality, the dangers of such usage are obvious. Too much of this will get you sanctioned – and not just by your local Senior, either: the Powers take misuse of the Speech quite seriously.
Sometimes (5) comes up as something you’re going to have to do, but it’s always approached with caution, and first making sure you have the necessary authorizations. Indiscriminate “blasting” is not permitted.
But more often in a wizard’s general practice, (2) of the verb form comes up for use. Some challenges to the Lone Power are phrased as formal adjurations invoking the attention of the One or the Powers to the intervention one is about to enact on Their behalf. (There is a cultural similarity to the concept that one must give fair warning before one uses a firearm or other weapon of deadly force. Cf. Nita at the Crossings in Wizards at War, using one of the numerous forms of the monitory declaration.)
I assume that what we’re discussing here is (4) in the verb form, and part of (3). It would be the rare wizard who doesn’t succumb to some “railing profanely” every now and then. (”Profane” here should not be considered in its relationship to the word “profanity” but it its position on the far end of a spectrum that has “sacred” residing at the other end.)
So. Can you be profane in the Speech? Oh yeah. There is an extensive vocabulary set aside for this, mostly consisting of Speech-words which are “etymological nulls” – with no relationship to any word in the Speech that denotes or implies any real person, place, thing, force, or physical law. This allows the annoyed wizard to vent as necessary in the Speech without being concerned about inadvertently damaging anything real.
There is, however, also another class of swear words in the Speech for those who find the nulls a little too bloodless or unevocative. These words are more specialized, and exploit a function of the way spells work.
Specifically: for a spell to fire, you need two things: enacture and intent.
(And a structural substrate in the Speech.)
You need three things. Enacture, intent, a structural substrate in the Speech —
(And nifty red uniforms.)
Ahem. Where was I? …Anyway, the second class of Speech-based swear words is “culturally devised” to invoke the spirit or sense of a home culture’s nasty horrible things without actually invoking the things themselves – the words having been “enacture-stripped” by the Powers that Be to prevent accidental ill effects on reality. (And yes, there is a linguistics-oriented Power among whose many jobs is riding herd on the many recensions of the Speech. This Power ranks very high indeed, a colleague of the Michael Power / One’s Champion: in Earth-based cultures it has routinely been identified with Thoth and other such gods intimately involved with language and words of power.)
Anyway. These vocabularies, both the nulls and the devised, are very popular and are frequently enriched by lively additions from wizards in the field. Somewhere in Games Wizards Play we find* Nita realizing that while at the Invitational she’s been hearing a lot of fabulous swearing, here and there, and she wonders why she hasn’t spent a lot more time finding out where these words are coming from.
All the swear words, in the end, are a service the Powers gladly enable for their mortal colleagues who really do put up with a lot in the course of errantry, and ought to find venting easy rather than difficult. But also, it’s kind of an initiative to keep wizards swearing safely in the Speech, rather than in their milk languages / the local vernacular.
Because… well. On occasion, particularly occasions of great stress, enacture can slide out of the Speech (always in the foreground of the working wizard’s mind) and slop over into one’s vernacular usages. The subsequent effects can be, um, disruptive.
Let’s take a readily available example. If this man was a wizard —
— and said what he just said there, well, there’s a range of possible results.
I think it’s fair to assume from the visual and verbal context that occurs before and after this image that John here — had he been a wizard — would not have been intending to inflict shapechange on anybody. Especially not the person he’s addressing. He’s just had a bad last few minutes, that’s all, and his best friend has as well, and then (for, as usual, a tangled knot of ridiculously convoluted reasons) his BF has turned around and played a godawful trick on him.
The context suggests that John is more interested in having Sherlock stay just as he is, the better for John to hurl invective at him. But let’s assume also, for argument’s sake, that this wizard!John had a spell ready to use to deal with the problem they’ve just been through, and then he didn’t have to use it because Sherlock found the solution. The spell’s still lying around ready to fire, though. All the energy bound up in that construct is ready to go. All it needs is the trigger.
When there’s already enacture present, and a structure compatible with triggering by more than one method, and if one of those was a mere expression of intent – if you’re a little on the short-tempered side and for the moment blind to the complications that can sometimes ensue in English-language idiom, well, after the above utterance, in the next moment the wizard’s consulting best friend might have been abruptly replaced by a tall dark giant chicken**. Accidents do happen.
So the habit of keeping one’s cursing in the Speech, where the precision of the language doesn’t allow idiomatic hiccups like the above to occur, is generally a wise one: and the thoughtful wizard spends a certain amount of time every now and then looking up the “dirty words”.
Hope this helps.
*Well, maybe I should say ‘I find’. You lot will find it later.
**Or, who knows, a giant something else. Where John Watson is involved, you’d have to roll the dice… :)