Of gishes and arcane defencers and whatnot: Is 4th ed. language for everyone?

[Doug McCrae]

I guess its use arose as a term for characters that have levels in arcane knight, spellsword, abjurant champion, duskblade and similar classes. What would have been a fighter/magic-user in 1e, an elf in OD&D, or a warrior-wizard in Tunnels & Trolls. The concept has been around since the very beginning.

 

[Glyfair]

That being said, I prefer not to use it personally, and I would hope that it doesn't catch on outside of its current cult followers, but only time will tell.

I found that it was just an annoying usage that was mostly confined to character optimization discussions (and even there mostly on the WotC boards) for a while. You'd see a few appearances elsewhere until David Noonan used it in his blog. Then it start appearing elsewhere more frequently (about half the time with comments about "who came up with this stupid term").

 

[Dormammu]

Cool. I teach English and ESL as well. It's awesome.

What is with all these English teachers using contractions in written English? For shame!

 

[RigaMortus2]

Is life really so busy that saving a syllable or two is really worth using such an abominable term?

I don't think it has anything to do with being lazy and typing 'gish'.

It could also be argued that life is so boring that we come here and discuss in a thread about who does and does not like the term 'gish' being referenced to fighter/mages...

 

[Voss]

I don't think it has anything to do with being lazy and typing 'gish'.

It could also be argued that life is so boring that we come here and discuss in a thread about who does and does not like the term 'gish' being referenced to fighter/mages...

True and True. Its all about pandering to the folk who populate the Wizard's forums, who do tend to use it as a generic term. And yeah, this discussion has gotten rather silly. The audience to whom he was speaking knew what he meant. Communication: Successful.

 

[small pumpkin man]

Is life really so busy that saving a syllable or two is really worth using such an abominable term?

Umn, yeah? duh? same reason people say "phone" instead of "telephone" or AFAIK instead of "as far as I know", if multiple people regularly use a term with more than two syllables, it gets shortened, that's how language works.

Also, what exactly does gish mean then? Why is it more accurate a term than the others? I've heard a lot of different definitions for it just in this thread.

The most basic meaning is Fighter/Mage, it's useful because it's less accurate, less specific, more of a generic "role" (a character who can fight in melee as well as blast with spells) as opposed to a specific class/class/prestige class build.

It mostly shows up in char op boards because people wanted to play something like a fighter/wizard from 2e, which required a lot of messing around in early 3e, which involved going to the char op board, and these people needed a term to describe attempting to simulate that "character type" which didn't include referances to specific classes, "Gish" works for that purpose.

 

[Hairfoot]

Umn, yeah? duh? same reason people say "phone" instead of "telephone" or AFAIK instead of "as far as I know", if multiple people regularly use a term with more than two syllables, it gets shortened, that's how language works.

If that were the case, you'd regularly hear people say things like "afake, the bus leaves every half-hour", "Michael Jackson is an abhuman freak. O-to, I quite like "Thriller"" and "E-irk, Spock is half human. Correct me if I'm wrong."

Most of those abbreviations are ways of saying "how cool am I at this internet stuff?" as much as they're conveniences of communication.

 

[Betote]

The first time in my life I heard (read) the word "gish" was on a David Noonan's blog post. Then I searched on Wikipedia and found out it was some kind of war god of the Kafir (and also Scottish slang for "semen" ).

I don't mind if someone creates a new word and it spreads itself to become common usage, most of all if it's an useful word that refers to something priorly unnamed. But what irks me is when some people claim it's a perfectly common word which has been there all the time around.

 

[Wolfspider]

What is with all these English teachers using contractions in written English? For shame!

Man what

 

[Wolfspider]

Umn, yeah? duh? same reason people say "phone" instead of "telephone"

This is more like people using the word "kak" instead of "telephone"....