It is curious that, although the modern theory of evolution has its source in Charles Darwin’s great book On the Origin of Species (1859), the word evolution does not appear in the original text at all. In fact, Darwin seems deliberately to have avoided using the word evolution, preferring to refer to the process of biological change as ‘transmutation’. Some of the reasons for this, and for continuing confusion about the word evolution in the succeeding century and a half, can be unpacked from the word’s entry in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
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Curious Words from the Chronicles of Narnia
By Jeremy Marshall
Many dictionaries and guides are careful to warn readers about the difference between a
faun and a
fawn. However, anyone familiar with the tales of
C. S. Lewis is unlikely to confuse these two shy inhabitants of woodland glades, since the goat-footed, part-human
faun of classical Roman mythology is the first strange creature we encounter when reading
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Those who know the film/movie version will be flocking back to the theaters this month to see more fantastical creatures in
Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Many legendary creatures from ancient Greece and Rome, the Middle East, and Northern Europe inhabit Lewis’s Narnia. From the classical world come the beautiful maidens called
nymphs, including the
dryads, spirits of trees, and
naiads, spirits of streams and springs. (Lewis also calls the naiads ‘well-women’, which now reads rather oddly to anyone who has heard of ‘
well woman’ health clinics.) Also familiar to most readers are the
centaur—half horse, half human—and the more sinister
minotaur, or bull-headed man. The classical cast is completed by the god
Bacchus, with
Silenus and the
satyrs—similar to the fauns, but linked more to drunken revels than pastoral idylls—and by the
monopods, a one-legged race featured in
The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’, whose history can be traced back to ‘tall tales’ of the wonders of India, written down by credulous (or unscrupulous) ancient Greek writers and repeated by the Roman encyclopedist
Pliny the Elder.
Mismatched myths
Alongside these—in a mythological mix which is said to have irritated Lewis’s friend Tolkien—we find the
dwarf of Germanic legend and the
ogre of old French tales, as well as the
merman, the
werewolf, the
bogle (Lewis uses the old northern spelling
boggle), and the
wraith. Among the retinue of the White Witch are three entirely unfamiliar types of creature, the
orknies,
ettins,