Eldraeic Word of the Day: Serev

[avatar (Alistair Young)]

serev (n.): Blood, or other primary life-fluid (e.g., myneni crystalplasm, codramaju suspension, mezuar sap, etc. – even, to stretch a metaphorical point, digisapience electricity.)

A word notable for its use in many metaphor-based compounds and etymological cousins, notably seredar (“blood-person”, or paramedic); seredhain (“blood-war”, or war of extermination/genocide); seredáné (“blood-precursor”, or genetic parent); sereglés (“blood-key”, or biometric security system); sereqártill (“blood-price”, or weregeld); seredelefí (“blood-oath”, a contract secured on one or both parties’ lives); and saráv (justice).

 

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This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://eldraeverse.com/2018/04/10/eldraeic-word-of-the-day-serev

[avatar (Alistair Young)]

Comments migrated from WordPress:

@Eric Manwill <ericmanwill@gmail.com> on 2018-04-11 10:03:11 wrote

The fact that the serev/sered component comes first in every one of the compound words above intrigues me. What linguistic rules are in play here?

@Alistair Young <athanasius.skytower@arkane-systems.net> on 2018-04-11 14:08:11 wrote

In this case, most of the compounds are made out of what were, originally, tra- descriptions; so, to take el seredhain as an example, it’s based on the original phrase el traserev hain, and retains the ordering of its components.

(A tra- description is the simplest and least precise, even semi-metaphorical, way of “adjectivization” in Eldraeic. Basically, you prefix one anesprel (predicate) with another, attaching tra- to the prefixor, which then modifies it. So

el traserev hain

is to be read as

a blood TYPE-OF war

and

el traserev táné

is to be read as

a blood TYPE-OF parent

without being too particular about the nature of the TYPE-OF relationship, you see?)

((For extra fun, you can stack up modifiers so that you can use modified predicates as modifiers for other predicates, by repeating the tra- prefix to indicate level of nesting, thus:

el tratrakercal trakecbal itavir

The (prey TYPE-OF animal) TYPE-OF yell.

So you can say the old linguist’s cliché, “pretty little girl’s school” in Eldraeic and express all the different possible meanings unambiguously.))

@Specialist290 <carpentereli@outlook.com> on 2018-04-11 16:27:20 wrote

((For extra fun, you can stack up modifiers so that you can use modified predicates as modifiers for other predicates, by repeating the tra- prefix to indicate level of nesting, thus:

el tratrakercal trakecbal itavir

The (prey TYPE-OF animal) TYPE-OF yell.

So you can say the old linguist’s cliché, “pretty little girl’s school” in Eldraeic and express all the different possible meanings unambiguously.))

Is there a way to make such a construction intentionally ambiguous, as (say) a quasi-poetic double entendre where both (or each, if more than two) meanings may overlap and be meant at the same time? (e.g. the TVTropes page “Last Second Chance,” which can be interpreted as “another chance offered at the last second” and “the last offer of a second chance” equally validly.)

@Alistair Young <athanasius.skytower@arkane-systems.net> on 2018-04-12 12:32:02 wrote

Yes. I don’t know exactly how the quantum-superpositional cases work yet, but they are there.

@R.C. <richardjacole84@hotmail.com> on 2018-04-12 05:31:26 wrote

So, presumably hainadar literally means ‘war-person’, and can be glossed as ‘warrior’ or ‘soldier’ or ‘serviceperson’?

@Alistair Young <athanasius.skytower@arkane-systems.net> on 2018-04-12 10:15:18 wrote

Precisely so.