I just heard this word for the first time on NPR today. Is it used at all anywhere in the world? Oh, yeah, it means making magic or miracles, from the Greek Thaumus, the father of the Harpies.
As a matter of fact, as a precocious teen, I used to read the thesaurus, and had a friend who was a magician. I referred to him as a thaumaturg for years, and he was clueless!
Posts: 1412 | Location: Buffalo, NY, United States
Quinion says, "Of all the words in English that refer to the making of magic, this is perhaps the most resonant. It doesn’t have the negative associations of words such as sorcery or necromancy because it referred originally to the production of wonders for positive ends rather than any intent to cause someone harm."
Derivatives are thaumaturge, thaumaturgist, thaumaturgus, thaumaturgise, and thaumatrope. J.K. Rowling characters could doubtless use a thaumometer.
Interestingly, there are 2 very similar words. "Prestigiator" means a juggler or "prestidigitator"; while "prestidigitator" means the skill of performing magic tricks to amuse an audience....but also "deceitful cleverness". Aha! I will add that word to my vocabulary, too.
[This message was edited by Kalleh on Sun Feb 2nd, 2003 at 8:27.]
Sorry, RE, thanks to Kalleh I stand corrected. Well, actually I'm sitting, but that's a mere technicality.
Considering how miraculous - and frustrating - language is, I'm beginning to wonder if Thaumus might have invented it! It was one thing for Pandora to open the box full of grief and pestilence, and quite another for her to open her mouth! But then, maybe language was in that box.
I was so interested in these 2 similar words that I looked them up in OED today. Interestingly, though MW defined "prestigiator" as "prestidigitator", OED did not. They were defined as 2 distinct words. Furthermore, for a word board like this, I loved the following definition for "prestidigitator": Juggler with words.
I see three similar words here: Richards entry of prestigitator and Kalleh's two entries of Prestigiator and prestidigitator. Richard, was your entry a typo? I can't find it listed anywhere, and if not, what does it mean?
Posts: 1412 | Location: Buffalo, NY, United States
From etymology.com (love that site!): Interestingly, "prestidigitator" was coined in 1830, based on the Latin word "praestigiator" or "juggler". But, what was even more interesting was that "praestigiator" evidently came from the word "prestigious", which came into use around 1546. "Prestigious" was a derogatory word, meaning "practicing illusion or magic; deception". It dervived from the Latin word "praestigious" meaning "full of tricks". It wasn't until around 1815 that "prestigious" became a complimentary word, meaning "sense of dazzling".
