Is "Justiciar" the new "Rogue?"

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Should have been "Justicator".

Everyone loves justicating things.

Looks like Int is a dump stat for paladins, so mine is gonna be "justicating" the hell out of some orcs.

 

[Cam Banks]

I am an editor too. It doesn't drive me mad.

It's possible you fell in the potion as a baby, in which case, it no longer has any effect.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[billd91]

2. I said that English speakers have been using 'justicar' for years, and did a simple google books search giving usage evidence.

Might also be from OCR errors too, depending on the original source text.

Presence of a particular spelling doesn't necessarily imply intent to spell it that way. I'm reasonably certain nobody intends to refer to their high-skill point character as a variety of cosmetics. Yet they do and most of us don't think that's particularly appropriate or the creation of a new word. I'm more inclined to weigh the preponderance of use. If justiciar appears significantly more often than justicar, as it does in most of those linked documents, I'm going to assume they botched the spelling just as I'm going to assume that "He saw the rouge sitting at the table" means that a rogue was there, when the book has clearly been more about Gord the Rogue than the application of make-up.

When it comes to gaming and the (semi-)creative naming of specific things, I'm willing to give more leeway. If WotC wanted to specifically morph the word into the name of a prestige class or character, that's their business. But I would really hope that people would recognize it for what it is - a shift for a specific purpose in the game and not a general shift in language use, particularly if WotC decides to shift it back to a standard form of the word.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Any community that can make up the term gish g-word, then subsequently apply it to mean a generic warrior-mage is certainly well within its rights to appropriate the term justicar. English mavens and fans of justiciars will just have to deal.

 

[breschau]

It's possible you fell in the potion as a baby, in which case, it no longer has any effect.

Cheers,
Cam

Only a potion of awesome.

 

[Cam Banks]

Only a potion of awesome.

This may make you the Barney or the Obelix of Editing.

Best wishes on your career aspirations, in any case. You may be entirely wrong when it comes to justiciars, but you're at least no idiot.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[Tuft]

If justiciar appears significantly more often than justicar, as it does in most of those linked documents, I'm going to assume they botched the spelling just as I'm going to assume that "He saw the rouge sitting at the table" means that a rogue was there, when the book has clearly been more about Gord the Rogue than the application of make-up.

Yep, when it is spelled "justiciar" 30 times and "justicar" 1 time in the one and same book, I think the evidence weighs in rather heavily on the odd occurrence being a misspelling, rather than a creative endeavor by the author...

It's like looking at common forum postings and deciding "teh" is a valid variant of the definite article. It is certainly frequent enough, and since people use it, they must have intended to do so, right?

 

[Saeviomagy]

But, in the long view, the morphing of how the language is spoken versus how it is written is exactly how languages branch, new languages originate, etc. Further, when a language is forced to remain the same, i.e. not allowed to change, that's how they die.

No, languages die when the distribution and density of speakers falls below a critical level, and they're replaced with another language that is used by more people. The most common cause of this is when a language becomes so splintered due to regional changes that it's no longer useable as a form of communication outside of the area where it evolved, and it effectively breaks into multiple languages, each with a very small number of speakers.

Languages are organic, they evolve over centuries. Just in my lifetime the number of words created and entering the dictionaries is staggering, plus the new definitions for existing words. If we offer pure resistance and don't allow anything in, we wouldn't have any of the following: email, cell phone, snail mail, anime, audiophile, carjacking, cross-trainer, date rape, earwitness, computer, Ebonics, emoticon, flame (in the internet forum sense), 411 (information), garden burger, ginormous, japanimation, jones (desire), Jordanesque (a la Michael Jordan), mallrats, McJob, metro-sexual, netizen, pooper-scooper, postal (as in going postal), potus, road rage, spam (annoying email), spork, swoosh (the nike logo), tagging (spray-paint graffiti), televangelist, terraform, grok, troll (internet meaning), zine, and that's just a quick google away. (Oh, yeah, there's that word too.)

Number of words in your list that are new specific meanings that fit within the broader meaning: 12

Number of words in your list that are new meanings for old words: 2

The remaining words are new words for new meanings.

Number of words that you put up that are simple misspellings and mispronunciations of existing words... 0

Justicar is not a new word for a new meaning - it's a misspelling of a word used by a small proportion of the population to mean something that the original already meant.