: Re: Should I use the words "pyromancy" and "necromancy" even if they don't mean what people think they do? If you look up the exact definition for "pyromancy" or "necromancy" they refer to divination

@Jennifer354

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These terms are very often used to mean magic, and I've never before encountered anybody discussing the ancient greek etymology. You are totally safe using the modern meanings.

In general, words often do have multiple meanings, and we understand from the context which meaning you are using: if you were writing a historical text about ancient greek superstition, we would interpret pyromancy as telling the future from fire, whereas in a modern fantasy story, we interpret it as fire magic. In fact, if you wanted to write "pyromancy" in a modern fantasy story and have the reader understand "telling the future from fire", you would actually have to explain (or show) that this is your intended meaning, and it would be surprising to the majority of your readers.

You can find countless examples of words whose etymological (or alternative) meanings we happily ignore, e.g. you don't mind that "demon" originally simply meant "god" or "deity" in ancient greek, or for that matter that computer people today, when mentioning a daemon, mean a process running in the background...

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