




 |
|
 |
 |
 |
From English Grammar by the California State Board of Education, 1888.
AskThePessimist quips: " What Chomsky was afraid to reveal: The structural grammar of the story of your life."
|




 |
|
 |
 |
 |
Here's our internet exclusive on the meaning of "lupacchi magic" in the TV Asahi series Kamen Rider Wizard. Recall that the titular wizard is a combination of two archetypes, the stage magician and the occult magus. Hence, "lupacchi" alludes to something that serves both as a stage magician's prop and a magus' animal familiar. The root "lupa" is not the she-wolf you might expect but rather a derivation of the Latin "lepus," meaning a hare. The suffix "-acchi" is from the Italian "-acchio," which gives both a diminutive and instrumental connotation. So "lupacchi magic" literally means "little helpful rabbit magic."
Previously, we noted how honored we are that our controversial "pop" take on occult language, in Magic Words: A Dictionary (Weiser Books), proved influential to the writers of Kamen Rider Wizard when they sought catchy English phrases to work into their scripts. In that show, the magician hero uses playful pop-culture-derived words like "shabadoobie" to trigger transformations. Though we have been lauded for being the first reference of magic to analyze mystical phrases from pop lyrics, comic books, TV shows, movies, and pulp fiction, our approach is yet something of a hot potato. Claude Lecouteux's Dictionary of Ancient Magic Words and Spells directly takes on our own dictionary, claiming that while the Harry Potter series has popularized magic words, " novels, films, and comic books can provide only a simplified, distorted version of them." You'll have already detected a philosophical division that can be likened to the "lesser and greater vehicles" of Buddhism's Hinayana and Mahayana schools. The "greater vehicle" (our own) allows for the recognition of magic words in all sorts of sources and contexts, while the "lesser vehicle" (Lecouteux's) pooh-pooh's language not scrawled on ancient scrolls. (Here's a secret that the Buddhists eventually came to realize: both vehicles get to the same place. Lecouteux, bless him, doesn't seem privy to that insight. But no matter, as words of power march on, oblivious and impervious to the footnotes scholars try to pin on them.)
|









 |
|
 |
 |
 |
Belated thanks to Rosa Viaca Mesquita for mentioning our dictionary of one-letter words in her blog post about letters in space:
“Do you know what ‘A’ means, little Piglet? It means learning, it means education, it means all the things that you and Pooh haven’t got.” —Winnie The Pooh
I found this quote in the book One-Letter Words: A Dictionary by Craig Conley, in which he tries to find the possible meanings that each letter can have when used by itself. It is quite interesting to find out a letter can be or mean so much. However I also like the possibility of a more poetic and abstract meaning.
|

 |
|
 |
 |
 |
How would you shelf our Magic Words: A Dictionary? Someone didn't like where the Hennepin County Library placed it: " This book has been shelved with the Pagan/Wiccan sections within the Library. Seeing this, I thought it was a book of a different nature. Instead, it is a book listing all of the words one might use in slight of hand and parlor tricks. Not at all related to where it was shelved." Indeed, our book seems to need its own special shelf in between two sections; as Library Journal said, "Despite its undeniable appeal to New Age audiences, Conley's (One-Letter Words: A Dictionary) book of more than 700 words and phrases is just as relevant to the linguist and language enthusiast as it is to Occult followers."
|

Page 39 of 71

> Older Entries...

Original Content Copyright © 2025 by Craig Conley. All rights reserved.
|