D&D General Which D&D Words and Things are Post 1608?

[Enevhar Aldarion]

The way technological advances can happen so quickly, it is weird that the first spyglass did not happen until over 300 years after the first eyeglasses were invented in the 13th century.

 

[Lanefan]

Should I bring up obsolesced D&D terms like Infravision and Ultravision? I was so glad when D&D dropped them.

Why, might I ask? I've always found Infravision and Ultravision both easy to explain and great differentiators between different types of night-sight.

 

[Lanefan]

The way technological advances can happen so quickly, it is weird that the first spyglass did not happen until over 300 years after the first eyeglasses were invented in the 13th century.

Keep in mind the OED is only citing the first reference found in writing, which doesn't tell us how long spyglasses (by whatever name) had existed before someone wrote about them using that name.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The whole English language.

The closest thing to a Common tongue was Latin. English was parochial, with lots of regional variations. You might credit Shakespeare for inventing "standard" English. I assume that is why the 1608 date (Renaissance rather than medieval) was picked out of the air.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The way technological advances can happen so quickly, it is weird that the first spyglass did not happen until over 300 years after the first eyeglasses were invented in the 13th century.

Probably not quite true. Very early telescopes consisted of two glass spheres, one slightly larger than the other, with a piece of leather that could be rolled into a tube. They had probably been knocking about for quite some time before Galileo Galilei (a notorious self-publicist) took the credit for inventing it. Same with lots of innovations. They almost certainly existed before they were recorded. Remember that mass literacy was not a thing, so the people who actually could record things was somewhat limited. And, as any historian will tell you, the things that got recorded where the things the people who could write felt where important. So that means the common details that everyone took for granted are the things we know least about.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think it's not insignificant that the language used in the Willow and Critical Role TV series, and the upcoming D&D movie, is unashamedly modern American English, using phrases that would be anachronistic in 1980, never mind 1608.

The only recent show to attempt something other than that was TRoP, which went for mid-20th century upper class English English (AKA BBC English), with an Irish/Australian/northern English hybrid for the not-hobbits.

I suppose Game of Thrones. They used a lot of regional English accents, which made it sound exotic to an American audience, but ordinary to a British one.

 

[Aldarc]

The whole English language.

The closest thing to a Common tongue was Latin. English was parochial, with lots of regional variations. You might credit Shakespeare for inventing "standard" English. I assume that is why the 1608 date (Renaissance rather than medieval) was picked out of the air.

Much like the influence the Luther Bible had on the German language, a much stronger case can be made for the influence of the King James Bible on the English language.

I think it's not insignificant that the language used in the Willow and Critical Role TV series, and the upcoming D&D movie, is unashamedly modern American English, using phrases that would be anachronistic in 1980, never mind 1608.

The only show to attempt something other than that was TRoP, which went for mid-20th century upper class English English, with an Irish/Australian/northern English hybrid for the not-hobbits.

Probably because, most of the time, the idea that there is a proper English dialect for made-up fantasy worlds is a bunch of hogwash, often the Brits projecting their contemporary dialects backwards in time as if that is how the English always sounded.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Much like the influence the Luther Bible had on the German language, a much stronger case can be made for the influence of the King James Bible on the English language.

Sure. And printing generally. The everyone understands everyone else Common is a D&D nonsense. Unless you have a setting like Eberron with regular use of magical communication.

It's something C. J. Sansom touches on in his Shardlake novels - people from different parts of Britain being barely able to understand each other.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

I hereby nominate this thread for the Major Mark of Excellence from the humanities nerd community!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

How about words in common usage in 1608 that you never hear uttered in D&D?

Although, come to think of it, most of those I know involve swearing...