Featured Post

An Interview With Simon Loxley

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Something About Necreavit

Dead tongue.

Prospero finds the "nonsense Latin word" necreavit carved into the sash of King Gorm's Hall of Records (The Face in the Frost, 58).

As Bellairs says, this is not a real word. We turned to his friend Charles Bowen for his thoughts:
"creavit by itself means he has created. Ne can be a negative, but it isn't as such here (running two words together didn't mean very much in ancient or medieval texts; we've become much fussier about that in recent centuries). Still, I'm more inclined to see something formed by combining Latin creavit with the Greek root from which necrotic and necropolis are derived: nekros (corpse). Thereby he has made a corpse or he has killed are perhaps consistent with the feeling in this scene. It's worth pointing out also that neco in Latin means kill, murder."
There you go.

No comments: