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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: BjustaB on September 07, 2007, 06:21:13 PM
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I am guessing that this group would probably be the best to help me with a word issue. I am looking for a word that means non-magical or non-mystical. The closest word I can come up with is “mundane” but that word also has the connotation of boring and I don’t want to convey that at all. When my main character and her friends use the word they are only being descriptive not judgmental.
I have turned the thesaurus upside down and still am not finding the word I am looking for. Any ideas? Since the novel is set in this world, urban setting, I cannot make up a word – it needs to be something readily recognizable.
Thanks,
Barbara
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How about "grounded"?
Unaffected...
Ordinary...
Uncomplicated...
Conventional...
Just throwing out ones as they come...
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If it isn't magic, then of course it's boring!
Perhaps you should try making up a word. Like "Muggles" in Harry Potter.
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"normals" has been used for such a description in something, but I can't for the life of me remember where I'd heard it!
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I'm not sure "unpowered" is a real word, how about "the unempowered" ?
When people who are clued in on something refer to those who are clueless, they often refer to them as "the straights", which I think most readers would understand.
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Naturals
Uninitiated
Common
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You say the characters are being "descriptive, not judgemental" in describing non-magical humans, but I would guess that they still feel superior to the lesser beings. Something like the Whites referring to humans as "kine" for herd beasts as food. In casual conversation among themselves, they might use shortened descriptions like "Norms" for "normals", or "Humes" for "humans", or "Ords" for "ordinary people", or even an acronym of some sort. Every subculture out there seems prone to creating their own acronyms. Humans in this case could be NPLUs, for Not People Like Us.
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If you wanted to use color as a metaphor for magic, then perhaps the mundane, unempowered, banal, or what have you could simply be...
Pale.
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Telluric.
Materials.
Ephemerals (as opposed to something along the lines of 'Those Who Walk In Forever'.)
Bound (as opposed to those 'freed' by knowledge of magik.)
Mute (as opposed to those who know 'The Language Of The Universe'.)
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"Streamer", from mainstream.
"Scalie", because of the scales over mortal eyes.
"Daylighter", or "Lighter", for someone not highing the the shadows.
"Fiver", from 9 to 5.
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i myself use unGifted and Gifted in my novel
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"Conventional" works for me. How about "typical" or "mainstream".
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Mortals?
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Call 'em Commons (darn you AA for thinking of it first!). Norms. Straights. Sapiens. Regs. Blinders. Giftless.
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Ooh, I like Sapiens.
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"Vanilla"?
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I'm using "laity" in the one of my projects where it's relevant. Because I've grumped quite a bit about the distinction between "layman" (not a scientist) and "lay person" (not clergy) in contemporary English, so the temptation to make the confusion even worse in that fictional universe is not resistable.
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"Vanilla"?
Ready salted.
(I come from family that refers to icecream as ready-salted and crisps/chips as vanilla).
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Ready salted.
(I come from family that refers to icecream as ready-salted and crisps/chips as vanilla).
Er... what?
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Er... what?
OK, maybe this is a Hyperborea*-specific thing. Where I grew up, vanilla was your basic standard ice-cream flavour, what you got if you asked for ice-cream and did not specify; likewise, if you asked for crisps - the things USAns call chips, but what we call chips USAns call fries - without specifying what flavour, the default is ready-salted. Hence a mildly silly family like mine would swap the two around.
There is an unhelpful failure mode here where someone is asked what sort of sugar they want and says "vanilla", meaning normal plain sugar (as opposed to, say, icing sugar) and goes to the cupboard and finds the jar of sugar with the vanilla pods in which is actively vanilla-flavoured sugar and not necessarily the same thing.
The bit about "chocolate and strawberry and vanilla" in Good Omens is an accurate represetation of Hyperborean life as of a couple of decades ago.
*Yes, if you want a name covering both Britain and Ireland with no political subtext whatsoever, you have to go back as far as Strabo.
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(Apropos of nothing, I thought Hyperborea, shorn of the quasi-mythical ancient-Roman context, referred to Scotland...)
I see what you mean - a meta-inside joke. ;D
And I am a long-time fan of Good Omens; Adam and his gang trying to figure out all the flavors of ice cream was hysterical!