Upir Lichy - possible origin of the word Lich?

[Tratyn Runewind]

Hello,

the monstrous mummy of some ancient king still crowned with untarnished gold but turning to my gaze a visage that more than time or the worm had wasted. Broken swathings flapped about the skeleton legs, and above the crown that was set with sapphires and orange rubies, a black something swayed and nodded horribly; but, for an instant, I did not dream what it was. Then, in its middle, two oblique and scarlet eyes opened and glowed like hellish coals, and two ophidian fangs glittered in an ape-like mouth. A squat, furless, shapeless head on a neck of disproportionate extent leaned unspeakably down and whispered in the mummy 's ear. Then, with one stride, the titanic lich took half the distance between us, and from out the folds of the tattered sere-cloth a gaunt arm arose, and fleshless, taloned fingers laden with glowering gems, reached out and fumbled for my throat...

The obligatory lich quote. Possibly the most famous modern non-gaming usage of the term. From "The Abominations of Yondo", Clark Ashton Smith, c. 1926.

I will not be driven out of my body... I will not change souls with that bullet-ridden lich in the madhouse!

Another famous usage; "The Thing on the Doorstep", H. P. Lovecraft, c. 1933.

Hope these help!

 

[herald]

I could have sworn that Lich had some old Roman roots.

 

[Steverooo]

The OED is available online, as a pay-service, as well as in print, and on CD-ROM (or was it DVD?) The prices are not for the faint-of-heart, though (although librarians might be interested).

I have started a new thread, here:

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?p=1205262#post1205262

 

[woodelf]

It sounds pretty fictional. The root certainly goes back to Proto-Germanic, so there isn't any way it could be from Gaelic.

yeah, 'cause there could never be a word in two or more languages, with differing meanings. [/sarcasm]

My point was that it *could* derive from the confluence of languages. *If* there really was a set of phonemes that, in one language, meant "life" and in the other meant "corpse", it's hardly a huge stretch for a word to derive from both of those, when the two languages interact, that means "living corpse", roughly. IOW, if the Gaelic reference is authentic, that would quite handily explain how it got from "corpse" to "undead" in meaning.

 

[tarchon]

yeah, 'cause there could never be a word in two or more languages, with differing meanings. [/sarcasm]

My point was that it *could* derive from the confluence of languages. *If* there really was a set of phonemes that, in one language, meant "life" and in the other meant "corpse", it's hardly a huge stretch for a word to derive from both of those, when the two languages interact, that means "living corpse", roughly. IOW, if the Gaelic reference is authentic, that would quite handily explain how it got from "corpse" to "undead" in meaning.

If only <i>beatha</i> (one of the most famous Gaelic words when yoked to <i>uisge</i>) were vaguely similar to "lich" somehow...
Yeah, maybe some yahoo at some point thought it was somehow related to "Gaelic" (I find that happens a lot - people confuse it with "Germanic," "Gothic," and Old English pretty regularly), but, you know, it means "corpse," it always has meant "corpse", and you don't really need to go too far from "corpse" to "animated corpse." It's a very common semantic process, especially active with obscure words, called "specification." In order to show that something weird happened with it, as a opposed to the perfectly normal and obvious process, I think it's only natural to expect to see at least some tattered shred of evidence for it.

Smith, in the quotation above, clearly intends "lich" to suggest that the thing is a corpse, with the animation being a condition peculiar to this horrifically exceptional corpse. He uses "mummy" in this same sense, and yet it doesn't seem necessary to propose that some non-existant Gaelic word has somehow transformed "mummy" from a corpse to an animated corpse.

mummy is to (animated) mummy

as

skeleton is to (animated) skeleton

as

lich is to (animated) lich

 

[tarchon]

I could have sworn that Lich had some old Roman roots.

His stylist is pretty good at hiding them.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

According to the OED, lich means a dead body, and its origins are traced back through old English, old German, Saxon, Gothic, and Old Teutonic. You gotta love having a high school that can afford expensive databases. The OED is an incredible resource.

Old German?
Liche <=> Leiche ? At least "Leiche" means dead body.
Interesting.

 

[tetsujin28]

Lich is a decidedly un-Latin word, so it has no Roman connections whatsoever.

 

[Carnifex]

Lich is a decidedly un-Latin word, so it has no Roman connections whatsoever.

CAS definitely uses the word in other stories to the one quoted above, like the Collossus of Ylorge (or whatever it's called, very cool story), to just refer to any kind of animated corpse.

CAS's stuff is really good for adventure inspiration. The Collossus one for instance, or the White Worm one (a villain, attacking the coasts from an enchanted iceberg, killing coastal dwellers and stealing away their powerful arcanists to serve him and... well, you'll have tor ead the story to find out ). Or the one with the temple of Morraddin, what a cool inspiration for a kingdom centred round the worship of a death-god with instant wierd and spooky rituals and practices to worry your PC's.

I mean,, they'd be really freaked if they're used to raise dead's and ressurections, then they die in the territory of Morraddin and his masked priests (probably monks and monk/clerics considering they show a fair bit of ahnd-to-hand skill in the story) turn up to claim the body for their god!

 

[Flyspeck23]

Old German?
Liche <=> Leiche ? At least "Leiche" means dead body.
Interesting.

Lich <=> Leiche (German) <=> Lika (Old German)