Urth Net
Daemon. And on. And on.
↰ answers Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
· by quotation
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Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
because said child has read a moderate amount of SF/F, she has no problem adapting when the word is revealed to mean something like an externalized soul.
And later:
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From all of which I stand by my
original conclusion: that it is fairly unlikely that a child,
reading THE GOLDEN COMPASS, will (as you originally put it)
learn that a word used by Christianity to mean an
incarnation of evil originally meant something as
harmless as "spirit."
If the word 'daemon' is at some point "revealed to mean something like an externalized soul", right at that point the child -knows- that a word with Christian connotations of evil is being used to mean something as harmless as 'spirit'. If she's spared my lesson in political etymology, fine. She's still being given something to think about, which was my original argument.