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<blockquote data-quote="Bohandas" data-source="post: 8815689" data-attributes="member: 7015707">That's not confusing at all, that's the original meaning of the word, which was just a synonym for &quot;goblin&quot;. There's a trend in fantasy literature and D&amp;D in particular to take synonymous words for a type of monster (especially if that monster is only vaguely defined in the popular imagination or has a lot of variation to it) and make the different words apply to diffetent variations on the theme, rather than remaining synonymous. Compare the separation of &quot;demon&quot;, &quot;devil&quot;, and &quot;fiend&quot; (edit: and &quot;ghoul&quot; too, for that matter) into different (albeit sometimes overlapping) concepts. Or the existence of the Orcs, If I recall correctly, prior to tolkien &quot;orc&quot; was just a weird regional version of the word &quot;ogre&quot; rather than a seperate monster. And then there's the whole &quot;gorgon&quot; thing that we've also been discussing in this thread.Now that I think of it, this sort of thing could actually solve the issue that I have with the halflings being an inconsistent mishmash of new ideas and derivative ideas. What we need is a seperate &quot;hobbit&quot; creature to soak up all the derivative ideas while the &quot;halfling&quot; race would retain the original ideas and both would be defined and the derivative ideas would be safely quarantined</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Bohandas, post: 8815689, member: 7015707"] That's not confusing at all, that's the original meaning of the word, which was just a synonym for "goblin". There's a trend in fantasy literature and D&D in particular to take synonymous words for a type of monster (especially if that monster is only vaguely defined in the popular imagination or has a lot of variation to it) and make the different words apply to diffetent variations on the theme, rather than remaining synonymous. Compare the separation of "demon", "devil", and "fiend" (edit: and "ghoul" too, for that matter) into different (albeit sometimes overlapping) concepts. Or the existence of the Orcs, If I recall correctly, prior to tolkien "orc" was just a weird regional version of the word "ogre" rather than a seperate monster. And then there's the whole "gorgon" thing that we've also been discussing in this thread. Now that I think of it, this sort of thing could actually solve the issue that I have with the halflings being an inconsistent mishmash of new ideas and derivative ideas. What we need is a seperate "hobbit" creature to soak up all the derivative ideas while the "halfling" race would retain the original ideas and both would be defined and the derivative ideas would be safely quarantined [/QUOTE]

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