anachronistic phrases in fantasy

Thats a tough one.

As far as the pugilism goes, I'd stick with it. its a technical term, so if they perform the action described, its correct.

Maybe if you simply reduced the number of idioms you use (and I've been told thats a good thing whatever you are writing) it would solve itself.

Otherwise, I'd say writing naturally is more appealing to me than strict 'accuracy.'

IdiotsRUs said:

I ask because a couple of people have said that the phrase 'made my flesh creep' is too modern.

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That's lunatic.

"Sardonic" is fine, because you are probably one of seven people who know its origin off the top of your head.

"Right hook" straddles the border, because it is recognizable terminology from a specifically Anglo-American sport. For most, it would pass unnoticed; for some, it would have the same Raymond Chandler/Damon Runyon feel as "mudder" or "six to five."

Me, I wrote a fantasy that was flagrantly, deliberately anachronistic, so I wouldn't have to worry about it.
Some calls it lazy; I calls it Post-Modernism.

"right hook" is a bit odd. It really depends on the style of fighting you have them learn. If it fits use it, but be careful that your hand-to-hand style is not just based off modern boxing or whatever.

If you're translating to English, why use the English of those times instead of modern English? Obviously, you can't use bullet, train etc. but as long as they'd have some sort of equivilent I don't think there's a problem.

I have fun with this sort of thing. My novel is set in the late Ice Age, so everything has to toe a fairly paleolithic line. There are no domestic animals and no organized commerce or standard medium of exchange, so the expression "a pig in a poke" is taboo along with all its cousins. (Mere hundreds of years ago, to cheat someone out of a few farthings, one would stuff a cat in a bag and try to sell it as a young pig.) This also gave rise to the saying "let the cat out of the bag" -- to expose a secret. My people express the same sort of sudden revelation with "the boar is out of the bushes", a hunting metaphor.

The trick is to make it work, not to be too obscure.

One problem with words is that their connotations change over time, they get new flavors of meaning. Sometimes it's hard to use a perfectly good word not because it is too modern, but because a certain skewed modern usage is too current.

It depends on when your story is set. If your story is set in a period in which English existed as a language, then checking words and phrases for authenticity makes sense. If your story is set earlier, it doesn't. Also, "made my flesh creep" isn't particularly metaphorical; its meaning is almost literal. Even if the earliest citation known is 1727, there's nothing in the phrase itself to indicate it couldn't have existed earlier, but just never happened to get written down.

On the other hand, I agree you should avoid words that name specific things which are anachronistic.

On the third hand, the etymology of a word like sardonic is not immediately obvious. You would be left with an extremely limited vocabulary if you eliminated every word like that.

It's still going to come down to a judgment call in some cases, but those are the guidelines I'd use.

This is one thing I have personal issues with. For example, I don't even use the word "okay" in my books. I never use idioms that don't fit with the feel of my world. Besides, it's far more fun making up my own instead. The trick is to use them judiciously - and not to have everyone make a point of commenting on how cool the idiom is. If your characters use them naturally, hopefully your readers won't even notice.

In fact, I think the biggest compliment I think I ever received was when my cousin (who is also beta-reading my WIPs) used one of my characters' idioms in her every-day speech without even realising it (well, until I stopped and stared at her and then started bouncing off the walls from joy, anyway...)

IdiotsRUs said:

Greco - Roman originally, and practised fairly widely even now But it is practised in my world ( some moves are different, but a right hook is definitely in there) But because it's so specific, that's why I'm doubting myself. I'm racking my brains to think of an (easily understandable) alternative. But then again a punch is also a technical term from that sport, and I don't think anyone would see that as anachronistic.

ETA: what is a mudder, or a six to five?

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But I'm willing to bet they didn't talk about a "right hook" among Roman pugiles.

A "mudder" is a horse than runs best on a muddy course.
"Six to five" are odds...as in Damon's Runyon's famous quip "I've concluded that all life is six to five against."

Matera the Mad said:

I have fun with this sort of thing. My novel is set in the late Ice Age, so everything has to toe a fairly paleolithic line. There are no domestic animals and no organized commerce or standard medium of exchange, so the expression "a pig in a poke" is taboo along with all its cousins. (Mere hundreds of years ago, to cheat someone out of a few farthings, one would stuff a cat in a bag and try to sell it as a young pig.) This also gave rise to the saying "let the cat out of the bag" -- to expose a secret.

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I heard the cat out of the bag one came - like so many others - from the Royal Navy. They kept the cat-o-nine tails in a bag, and if you let slip of any underhanded goings on aboard the ship, you'd let the cat out of said bag and someone would get a whupping.


On topic, 'right hook' wouldn't phase me at all. Neither would sardonic. Even china cups don't bother me, or shooting arrows. Maybe I'm just dense.

Oh this is a good one, Idiot.

And I LOVE tweaking the phrases to suit my fantasy culture. But I have no life, so that helps.

I did get called out on a calling something a chaise longue in a world that had no France, which makes sense but sucks. Long chair sounds like a torture device.

Nakhlasmoke said:

I did get called out on a calling something a chaise longue in a world that had no France, which makes sense but sucks. Long chair sounds like a torture device.

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But that's just a French word that's been integrated into the English language. They wouldn't call it a chaise longue, but they wouldn't call an ordinary chair an ordinary chair either.

I hereby un-call you out.

JimmyB27 said:

...

I hereby un-call you out.

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YAY!!!

*sticks chaise longue back in the novel*

I've had to ponder this very thing with my current WIP. I'm working with a Steampunk-ish world, and I'm trying very hard to make their exclamations and idioms match the only world they've ever known.

For example, to say one is taking a risk, instead of saying something like "sticking your neck out", it comes out more like "jamming your foot in the gears".

This is a constant issue with me as my writing takes place in ancient Egypt or among the Late Woodland Indians (with some people from the 18th and 19th century thrown in for good measure). I've found myself using terms, when relating to these characters, that would make no sense out of a 21st-century context, so have to watch myself, and every time I use a slang or informal phrase, ask myself, "Would this make sense if this person used it...?"

That's honestly the only thing one can do, try to watch out for such anachronisms in the first writing. Regarding changing them after the writing is done, I guess I'd do the same thing--sit and think if it's something the character in question could logically understand--even if it's likely they wouldn't have used the phrase, could they have?

All the phrases you used--creeping flesh, a right hook, sardonic--seem fine in almost any context to me. Think about a caveman, for example; something scares him. Surely his flesh can creep? That phrase can stay in any time period. "Sardonic" may be Greek in origin, but the meaning of the word itself is no longer strictly Greek, so it can be used on another planet; if you were to get rid of it, you'd have to get rid of almost any word in the English language, because they're all based on phrases and concepts that don't exist EVERYWHERE.

The "right hook" one, while not terribly time specific, is the one that trips me up the most, because it's informal usage, and such language might not apply to some characters. I could not imagine my Late Woodland Indians using the phrase, even if it might make sense to them. I'd watch out for that one. Then again, my Late Woodland Indians aren't into pugilism so of course such a phrase would be odd for them; it seems to have more of a context with your characters, so you'd probably not have as much to worry about. I can fully imagine my European characters from the same story using such a phrase, for example.

Sorry I haven't any clear advice, just wanted to let you know I fully understand the issue. I've found it's easiest to avoid such mistakes by getting into the character's head and keeping their own cultural and linguistic understanding in mind when writing, so I can either avoid or modify such phrases. Even if one is a relatively recent phrase, it might not necessarily be anachronistic if the meaning of the words could be understood in any place or time period.

For example, for humor, I had one character say, "Silly Rabbit! Tricks are for children!" It's based on a modern catchphrase, yes but number one, the character referred to is nicknamed "Rabbit," and number two, all of the words in the phrase can be understood in either context--it will definitely evoke images of a modern-day TV commercial, but it's something that could have possibly been said back in the 1500s. (And note that I changed "kids" to "children" as I don't think the word "kids" would have been understood by this culture back then.)

Such things don't always work though. One phrase I have perpetual trouble with is "zero in." This phrase does not seem to fit with my Late Woodland era, but at times I have to use it since there's no adequate alternative. I recall I also had the verb "divebomb" used once, and that really jarred me; I think I changed it but I can't recall to what. It's one of those words that doesn't translate well into something else that conveys the same image.

And sometimes you're just not sure. I have a Victorian-era British teenager and while they probably did have the words "kid" and "dad" back then, they always sound weird coming from him. :/

Smiling Ted said:

That's lunatic.

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But only in a world where there's a moon called Luna in latin...

I've deliberately used anachronisms in several fantasy stories, short and long. One example that springs to mind is when one character tells another that they're "in the same canoe".

Hoo boy. It's a little obvious, but then, it was supposed to be

Perle_Rare said:

But only in a world where there's a moon called Luna in latin...

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But you could just use the equivalent for "crazy".

SPMiller said:

I've deliberately used anachronisms in several fantasy stories, short and long. One example that springs to mind is when one character tells another that they're "in the same canoe".

Hoo boy. It's a little obvious, but then, it was supposed to be

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Everytime I try to do that it sounds funny. Like this one time one of my MCs (Who lives on a desert planet close to the center of the milky way) asks on of the bad guys if he wants to play "chicken you turkey?" and I just decided to have the MC's side kick ask her what a chicken is, and she just told him that she'd let him know if he would tell her what a turkey is.

Unless your fantasy characters speak modern English, whatever you write about them will be a 'translation' from the language of an imaginary world to our own. To get an accurate sense and feel of the words we use in that translation we really need to understand what our own words mean -- and where they come from. So we can't translate well until we are experts in both our own language and the thought of the imaginary world of our fiction.

Usually the issue with bad translation of fantasy ideas isn't that they're anachronistic. (Anachronism means 'out of time' - and your world's chronology may be very different.) More often, the problem with bad translation is that it's 'heterotopic' - out of place (e.g. bacon in a world where there's no pigs), or even more commonly 'heterodoxic' - out of the thought of the world (from heteros "the other" + dokein "to seem"). Heterodoxy is a term used in theology, but can equally describe ideas that reasonable people in the world simply wouldn't think. This most often happens when authors either haven't researched their fantasy world enough, or don't understand their own language.

Some of this heterodoxy may appear in language, but equally it may appear in the thinking of the characters or the narrative itself. For example, which of the following are heterodoxic for a mediaeval-style fantasy world?

1. Jon lost his train of thought.
2. A light went on in Mery's mind.
3. 'It's my choice!', cried Hari to the King.
4. Her sword shattered on the stone, and Jeni cast aside the shards, cursing. She must buy another in the next town.

Views on this might differ, but I consider 1) to be acceptable and 2-4 to be potentially heterodoxic. Reasons follow.

1) The word 'train' meaning 'to pull', appeared as early as the 1400s, and 'camel trains' have been around for over a thousand years. We might think of electric trains, but a mediaeval Jon might be thinking of a line of oxen pulling a wain. It might be poor styling, but I think that it's conceptually legitimate.

2) Unless lights operate instantaneously in this world, the metaphor is flawed. How about 'Understanding glimmered to brightness in Mery's mind'

3) The Cult of Individual Choice is a 20th century invention that had its roots in 18th century libertine thought. The Right to Defy Authority only gained popularity with the French Revolution. The words are all fine - but the thought behind it isn't terribly consistent with a world where people will gladly compromise on choice to ensure adequate food, shelter, health and protection from reavers - and believe that authority is created by might and heredity. Bottom line: you don't yell at your King.

4) The Ethos of Disposable Possessions appeared with mass production techniques. It doesn't apply to goods that take hundreds or thousands of hours of labour to create. Steel is expensive. You don't throw it away unless you're wealthy - you get it mended, or reuse it, or sell it for cash. (On the other hand, the Roman army used to commission cheap, mass-produced pottery which they would throw away after a few uses.)

Not all fantasy purports to be 'authentic', but certainly many readers expect at least verisimilitude in the culture and the thought. For this reason, I believe that writers of 'authentic' fantasy need to be capable sociologists, decent historians and good linguists.

How do you aquire this knowledge? I find the following useful:

• Read up on history and the literature of earlier times to understand how thought, values, morals and motives changed;
• Visit cultures different to your own. Don't just eat their food but look at their art and literature, their customs, their laws, values and traditions - find out how they think.
• Keep a dictionary handy - but make sure it has an etymology. Or use a good online etymology site like www.etymonline.com

Hope that helps!

Scott Lynch, author of the Gentlemen Bastards Sequence, uses okay a lot. I remember being berated by a reviewer on the old OWW for using it in my work.

ebenstone said:

Scott Lynch, author of the Gentlemen Bastards Sequence, uses okay a lot. I remember being berated by a reviewer on the old OWW for using it in my work.

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Getting berated might be too harsh. The writer's job is to convey both meaning and feel of the speaker's words; since there's a translational component to this for fantasy worlds, it's an art, not a science.

From www.etymonline.com:
The etymology of 'okay' is fairly modern, but so is the English we use in our narrative anyway. (If we wrote dialogue in Old English, hardly anyone would understand it)

In translating a conversation between two young friends in a mediaevalish setting it might make sense to use 'okay' ('aye' or 'yea' or 'yes' etc... might seem too formal). But in translating dialogue between (say) a knight and a king it might well look insubordinate to some readers - not because the language is 'anachronistic' but because the idea of giving informal assent to your king is heterodoxic.

Right Hook:

Call it a hook punch or something that makes what it is obvious.