Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials uses some words with which readers may not be familiar. The similarities between Lyra’s world and ours mean that the origins of these words can be traced.
The main source of etymological information used in this page was the two volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary:
- Shorter Oxford English Dictionary at Amazon.com
- Shorter Oxford English Dictionary at Amazon.co.uk (for British readers)
- Alethiometer
- From the Greek word ‘aletheia’, meaning truth, with the suffix ‘-ometer’, meaning a measuring device.
- Ambaric
- Equivalent to our word ‘electric’, it comes from the Arabic word ‘anbar’, meaning ‘amber’. Our word comes from the Greek word for ‘amber’, ‘elektron’. Rubbing amber produces static electricity.
- Chocolatl
- Equivalent to our word ‘chocolate’, it comes from the Nahuatl word ‘chocolatl’. Our word comes from the Nahuatl via the Spanish or French.
- Electrum
- Equivalent to our word ‘amber’, it comes from the Greek word ‘elektron’, meaning ‘amber’. Our word comes from the Arabic word for ‘amber‘, ‘anbar’.
- Gyptian
- Equivalent to our word ‘Gypsy’, it comes from the earlier words ‘gipcyan’ or ‘gipsen’, based on ‘Egyptian’. When Gypsies first arrived in England in the early 16th century, many people thought they came from Egypt.
- Marchpane
- Equivalent to our word ‘marzipan’, it is an archaic form of that word, from the German word ‘marcipan’.
- Subtle (The Subtle Knife)
- ‘Subtle’ in this sense means ‘slender’ or ‘sharp’, from an obsolete sense used in the 17th century.