Follow TV Tropes

Following

Quotes / Orphaned Etymology

Go To

but-the-library-of-alexandria: the thing about writing fantasy stories is that language is so based on history that it can be hard to decide how far suspension of disbelief can carry you word-choice wise - what do you call a french braid in a world with no france? can a queen ann neckline be described if there was no queen ann? where do you draw the line? can you use the word platonic if plato never existed? can you name a character chris in a land without christianity? can you even say ‘bungalow’ in a world where there was no indian language for the word to originate from? is there a single word in any language that doesn’t have a story behind it? to be accurate a fantasy story would be written in a fantasy language but who has the time for that
sebastian-bond: Tolkien had the time apparently
misbehavingmaiar: LIsten. Linguistics Georg, who invented over 10,000 conlangs each day, is an outlier and should not have been counted.

"It's named after the legendary sword Excalibur. But since swords don't exist in Mario's world, there's no way for Mario to get the reference."
— Monster List entry on Exor, Super Mario RPG remake

Top