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

[Mad_Jack]

Telegraphs begin in 1816, and Eberron has no telephone equivalent.

On a slight tangent, I've always found this to be somewhat hysterical...

Spoiler

It's fascinating to look back at some of this stuff and realize that a lot of things are either much older or much newer than we think...
(My ACW-era bayonet has a threaded metal screw in it, which I thought was odd until I found out that they date back to 1775 or so...)

 

[Tonguez]

It will outdoors, as it allows vision by starlight. (reduced but not eliminated if the sky is cloudy)

Doesn't help indoors unless someone casts Starshine, a 1e Druid spell (I'm not even sure if it's still a thing in 5e) that generates indoor starlight over an area.

Bioluminescent fungus glow underground. It would help explain how there can be whole civilisations in the Underdark

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Rapiers were invented in 1600s so should not be ubiquitous

1400s, not 1600s. The actual English word "rapier" was also in use by 1600.

 

[Azzy]

The explanation behind them is modern, sure, but the concept of some species being able to see by starlight and others being able to see by heat radiation doesn't have to be.

Yeah, hard disagree. Don't need the Predator in D&D.

 

[Steel_Wind]

"Libram" is just the accusative form of the Latin word libra. It is likely that it was meant to be a derivation of the Latin word liber, which means "book." (The accusative form of liber is librum, which might have been transmuted into "libram" because -um is not a common ending in English words.) Technically, liber also means "free, freedom," but the two etymologies are unrelated, like how "wind" (the thing that blows) and "wind" (the verb for coiling one object around another) are spelled the same but have completely different origins.

Dweomer, at least, is not at all a new invention, though he did revive a word that was nearly dead.

Libram was a scale or balance, or a term of measurement in latin. It's use to refer to it as a book was, as you say, a coined term by Gygax - never in use in latin. The word may have (wrongly) appeared in some thesaurus Gygax plainly used throughout OD&D and AD&D in his witing style.

Dweomer (pronounced Dwim-Mer) was a Middle English word for illusion or magic. That one must have been found in Gygax's thesaurus.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, hard disagree. Don't need the Predator in D&D.

Errrr...the Predator?

Ordinary cats have ultravision.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

On a slight tangent, I've always found this to be somewhat hysterical...

Spoiler

View attachment 268722

It's fascinating to look back at some of this stuff and realize that a lot of things are either much older or much newer than we think...
(My ACW-era bayonet has a threaded metal screw in it, which I thought was odd until I found out that they date back to 1775 or so...)

Oh yeah I love that stuff.

Like how old cafés are, or how people in the “old west” loved cocktails and bartenders were celebrities, and how Wyatt Earp had a favorite Ice Cream Parlor in Tombstone.

Like actual history is so much more fun than our popular media portrays.

 

[Celebrim]

Libram was a scale or balance, or a term of measurement in latin. It's use to refer to it as a book was, as you say, a coined term by Gygax - never in use in latin. The word may have (wrongly) appeared in some thesaurus Gygax plainly used throughout OD&D and AD&D in his witing style.

Dweomer (pronounced Dwim-Mer) was a Middle English word for illusion or magic. That one must have been found in Gygax's thesaurus.

Gygax seems to have consumed a massive amount of pulp fiction and 19th century medieval romances as a youth. I think it's equally likely that he accumulated his vocabulary and neologisms from Appendix N and such.

 

[Azzy]

Errrr...the Predator?

Infravision

 

[Tonguez]

Gygax seems to have consumed a massive amount of pulp fiction and 19th century medieval romances as a youth. I think it's equally likely that he accumulated his vocabulary and neologisms from Appendix N and such.

Dweomer specifically is Old English and refers to Dweorg (dwarf) magic, so yeah probably readings of old norse/anglosaxon legend rather than a thesaurus as such