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timepiececlockOne of the things that always annoyed me about JKR's use of spell-words in Harry Potter books, in fact the only thing of this nature that really did annoy me about her spell naming, was designating the phrase "Avada Kedavra" as a death curse, and basically the worst curse that could be uttered in the entire series.
Then she went on to sell billions of books and influence children's vocabularly for an entire young generation. The problem? She basically ruined the phrase "Abracadabra". Every 10 year old who read HP is going to forever associate the two, which puts unfair negative connotation on a phrase that has survived for hundreds of years with a relatively neutral meaning. It could be used to do good things, bad things, or things classified as neither moral nor immoral (like turning a flower pot into a clock.)
Here's a perfectly well-known word that's seeped in literary tradition, used by flowery princes and evil sorcerers alike, a phrase the Tooth Fairy might use to sneak some money under a child's pillow, and now through some questionable phonetics JKR has villified it. Ruins a good word.
If you're curious about the origins of the phrase abracadabra, Wikipedia has an entry on it, though no promises to accuracy or validity with that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abra_Kadabra#History
Then she went on to sell billions of books and influence children's vocabularly for an entire young generation. The problem? She basically ruined the phrase "Abracadabra". Every 10 year old who read HP is going to forever associate the two, which puts unfair negative connotation on a phrase that has survived for hundreds of years with a relatively neutral meaning. It could be used to do good things, bad things, or things classified as neither moral nor immoral (like turning a flower pot into a clock.)
Here's a perfectly well-known word that's seeped in literary tradition, used by flowery princes and evil sorcerers alike, a phrase the Tooth Fairy might use to sneak some money under a child's pillow, and now through some questionable phonetics JKR has villified it. Ruins a good word.
If you're curious about the origins of the phrase abracadabra, Wikipedia has an entry on it, though no promises to accuracy or validity with that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abra_Kadabra#History
