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Message: <blockquote data-quote="breschau" data-source="post: 4194155" data-attributes="member: 52376">No, what I'm suggesting is there are two words in question here, not one. Justiciar is pronounced "just-i-sheer." I'm not denying that. Justicar is pronounced "just-i-car." I'm not denying that. That the latter is derived from the former no one can deny. Your claim seems to be that the second is a just a misspelling of the first that's lasted too long, doesn't have an independent meaning/use, and that it shouldn't exist. I disagree.What I'm saying is that decades of consistent use of the word justicar makes it, by default, a real word. That's how the language evolves. It just happened, you missed it. Considering it is in print in various places, and used consistently therein, it does exist. How many other words have been invented by game companies? Wow, that's a dissertation in itself. Yet you don't deny any of those. There have to be a few that are intentional or unintentional misspellings of other words.And it's not just WotC, WoW has it too. If a certain number of people have to use a word before it becomes real for you, then hold onto your hat, because as of July 2007, WoW had 9 million users. At least 9 million people know the word justicar. How many know the word justiciar?Assuming every tabletop gamer knows justiciar, you're still outnumbered 4.5:1. And that's when you forget about all the WoD players who are just fine with justicar.I know that the masses are not a good judge of what is proper English, but you have to accept that at some point, the language will change in ways that you don't like. This is simply one of them. The dictionary only reports on usage, not dictate from on high what proper English should be.EDIT: As noted while I was typing this, at worst justicar is a variant spelling. But you can't claim which was used more without doing a hell of a lot of research.Also, as note while I was typing this, the more widespread a given word (or variant spelling) is, the more it is accepted. Given the numbers I posted, the variant w/o the "i" is more widespread, and thus more accepted. WotC has done the best it could, use an anachronistic word using the lesser know spelling. Perfect for medieval fantasy role-playing.</blockquote>

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