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User:RD/9k/root word mirage (Q51,30)

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Main entry

  1. root-word mirage / root word mirage (searchable) / name-element mirage / reading meaningful name elements out of the wrong names -> something of an arts trope. usually harmless. the only exception to that might be everyday instances of somebody reading a Chinese or Vietnamese name as "dung", etc. most of the time it's just funny, like Edward being a direction? gold. wondering if Oliver Wood is a beating stick? dark, but fine. turning the name Rowling into some dumb pun about rolling downhill and being unable to stop? perfect. I'd say that a name like "Darkstalker" doesn't fit into this motif because it's made of words that already have multiple meanings on their own. this motif is more like a frame shift mutation for words.

Sub-cases

  1. Squidward is a direction / Directional words end in -ward, therefore Squidward is a direction, and so are its original counterparts Edward, Hayward, and Siegward -> very silly, one of those things that normally you wouldn't think about for more than a minute, but does wrap around to being interesting in the context of "language games". you can't just make signifiers mean anything because to some extent there are reasons they mean the things they currently mean.
  2. "Hogwarts" is a direction [1] -> I have no idea if this is intentional or this is the same statement as "Squidward is a direction".
    arguments in favor: "hog" could be read as rightwards depending on the language. if that's true.... oh boy, it really doesn't look good for the meaning of the books does it? like, Hogwarts would be the same thing as the bad meaning of "redpilled".

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