Order by Destruction

by All Art Is Quite Useless

(Glossary)

Author's Note:

Hey there, reader!

After some thought, and me asking a couple of people whether they'd appreciate this tool, I've decided to write a full glossary for any and all archaic words Luna (or any other character) may use throughout this story.

If you have any suggestions as to how this tool could be improved, please leave them in the comments!

So, Luna. Hard to write, nigh(t) impossible to perfect. Terrible puns are asinine. If you, like me, have encountered a plethora of strange and foreign words while reading Luna orientated stories, then this guide is for you.

In it, I'll be listing each word that is either no longer in circulation or has a different meaning etymologically to the one a modern English speaker might be familiar with. I'll be defining them in my own words, rather than cutting and pasting from online sources (because hey, you guys are worth the effort) and I'll try to provide a little information on their origin too.

The words Luna will occasionally be found using throughout this story are primarily sourced from Middle English and Early Modern English.

Now, let's begin.

A-D

Afeared (1200's): A word that means afraid, with origins routed in Old English and links to Shakespearean works, fell out of use around the 1700's.

Beseech (1200's): Urgently or desperately beg. Cognate to other West Germanic languages such as Old High German bisuochan or Dutch bezoeken.

Betwixt: (1500's): A word that originates from Old English term betweox, meaning between or amidst. The 't' on the end of the word was not common until the 1500's. Betwixen is a variant of betweox that was also common in Old and Middle English.

Brazen (1200's) Word that originated in Old English meaning 'of brass' or 'made of brass'. Modern meaning to be bold and shameless is linked to old meaning, someone without shame could be described to be made of brass, although here it has both a literal and figurative meaning.
E-J

Egregious (1530's): Originating from latin, this word once meant extraordinary or excellent. In the late 1500's, the meaning was altered to 'extremely bad', a complete dichotomy, the antithesis of its original meaning.

Ere (1200's): Germanic word meaning 'before' or 'previous'.

Folly (1200's): A word meaning foolishness or idiocy, originating from Old French word folie, which was defined as madness or stupidity. At a point, folie also had a positive denotation in France.

Froward (1200's): Difficult to deal with, adverse, or difficult. A culmination of Old English term Fromward (meaning doomed to die) and Old Saxon term Fro, meaning backwards or away from.
K-Q

Gyve (around 1200's): Shackles or fetters. Origin of this word is unknown.

Mayhaps (1500's): An archaic word for perhaps, or maybe, originating from the term 'it may hap', hap meaning happen.

Naught (1400-1500's): A word that means 'nothing', and can be used as a replacement for zero in arithmetic, although this is most often occurs in Britain. Before meaning 'nothing', it meant 'an act of evil'. The old English 'naught' develops from cognates with other germanic languages (such as Old Saxon).

Nay (1200's): A word simply meaning 'no'. Originated in Scandinavia.

Nowise (1800's, not certain): A word meaning 'in no way'.

S-Z

Scrying (1520's): This is the act of magically viewing an event occurring in another place through a reflective medium such as a mirror or crystal ball. Scrying can also be related to foresight. This word comes from the early French word descrier, someone who published and shared information. From here, the word descry appeared in France, which once meany describe, but this is now obsolete. The English used and adapted this word in the sixteenth century, which led to the meaning used here.

Swith (1200's): A word which can strong, fast, strongly, or quickly. Derived from Old English word 'Swithe' (coined before 900), which only meant strong.

Trinity (1200's): A word derived from Latin, describing the state of being three, or a group of three. This was originally used by Christians to describe "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit", and the unity between the godhead. It has later been adapted for use outside of religion.

Comments

[secret89]

An excellent story so far, and right up my alley. You wouldn't believe how few adventure epics there are centered solely around Rainbow Dash. It seems only Twilight gets those stories because she has magic or some such.

As many have said, I've really enjoyed the characterization thus far. Luna is very well done, still a bit unsure of herself and adapting to the new world, but still powerful and determined. Rainbow is also very well done, though some of her speech seems to be a little more verbose than I would expect. That's not to say that I think she should be stupid, far from it; I hope to see her character grow to be multi-faceted. Too many authors just stick with the 'I'm awesome! And super blunt! And do things without thinking! Haha!', shtick, which gets old really quick. It's a very shallow characterization, and quite frankly an insult to Rainbow potential as a character, I think it's just harder to write her intelligently because you wouldn't want to sacrifice her outward traits. At least in my own experience. But I don't think you'll have a problem with that. So far Rainbow has been inquisitive and logical to an extent (her analysis of Luna's magic comes to mind), but not to detriment of her character. Really looking forward to seeing her character grow.

I really can't wait for Discord's characterization. Hoping for more on the villainous side. Or perhaps an enemy of my enemy is my friend attitude, if Luna is correct and Discord wishes to fight his former masters.

I'm curious to see where Luna goes during all this. I might be reading into it too much, but I wonder if the Nightmare is still involved with her. The song she sung to Rainbow seemed to hint to it.

I sense a lot of world building on the horizon, which I love in an adventure story. Beings older and more powerful than the Alicorns or even Discord? Even better, they were created by these beings? What history transpired? How was Discord involved? Are we looking at the prospect that Luna and Celestia were also created? What history does Celestia have in this that is preventing Luna alerting her? And what hidden power makes Rainbow so special? I'm hoping it goes beyond the Element of Loyalty, or if not, a greater explanation. Stories like The Powers of Harmony and Harmony Theory come to mind about stories that expand on the mysteries of the Elements.

So, long story short, I'm looking forward to more.

[All Art Is Quite Useless]

8301655

An excellent story so far, and right up my alley. You wouldn't believe how few adventure epics there are centered solely around Rainbow Dash. It seems only Twilight gets those stories because she has magic or some such.

Oh, I'd believe it! This is one of the reasons I chose to wrote this in the first place, actually. I'd searched and searched for a Rainbow epic that caught my interest, and found them to be pretty scarce! Made me think it ought to be fixed.

As many have said, I've really enjoyed the characterization thus far. Luna is very well done, still a bit unsure of herself and adapting to the new world, but still powerful and determined. Rainbow is also very well done, though some of her speech seems to be a little more verbose than I would expect. 

Thank you! The characterisation is very important to me, I like to craft my characters into something authentic that the reader can really care about, but not limit myself to the traits expressed by the show. It's a delicate balance between making a character a caricature, and making them completely OOC, and I try my best to strike it just right! Rainbow is fairly more intelligent than she lets on, or even realises herself. Her capacity to memorise various things helps her pick up on all sorts, and you'd assume that included every "eggheaded" thing Twilight had ever said. Not to say that she's a genius, but she's very intuitive, and has a great mind for maths and science. Her memory is the reason she's retained so much of her geographical knowledge, though she never even notices the jargon her brain uses to explain this and that when she's doing her job.

Too many authors just stick with the 'I'm awesome! And super blunt! And do things without thinking! Haha!', shtick, which gets old really quick. It's a very shallow characterization, and quite frankly an insult to Rainbow potential as a character, I think it's just harder to write her intelligently because you wouldn't want to sacrifice her outward traits.

I couldn't agree more. I've tried to relay this to other authors in the past, but a lot of them don't seem to pick up on what I'm saying. We see quite a bit of depth to Rainbow's character in multiple episodes (Testing, Testing, Tanks for the Memories, Newbie Dash etc.), episodes which make it clear that her problem isn't necessarily stupidity, but a mixture of naivety and some kind of attention deficit. She's also very impulsive, but that doesn't mean she can't stop and plan ahead sometimes. Rainbow is the kind of character that might act recklessly when in an emotional state, not so much otherwise unless she was very confident in what she was doing.

I really can't wait for Discord's characterization. Hoping for more on the villainous side. Or perhaps an enemy of my enemy is my friend attitude, if Luna is correct and Discord wishes to fight his former masters.

I'm looking forward to writing it! I've got big things planned for all three of these characters and the plot as a whole, we're still in the setup stage here. Act I hasn't even begun.

I'm curious to see where Luna goes during all this. I might be reading into it too much, but I wonder if the Nightmare is still involved with her. The song she sung to Rainbow seemed to hint to it.

Perhaps you are. While we're on the subject though, you've reminded me that I need to fix some of that song. I had a conversation with another user (who knows his poetry better than I do), and he made some wonderful suggestions as to how I could edit it. I'll be digging those out, editing that (as well as sweeping the rest of the story for latent issues), then getting back into the swing of writing this.

You pose a lot of interesting questions in your penultimate paragraph, and I can happily say you'll get your answers to all of them eventually!

And I'm looking forward to writing more, especially when I get brilliant comments such as this one in response. I'm sorry it took me so long to get back to you, I've been trying to do a million things at once lately!

8303849

I really liked the small war or words between Luna And Rainbow, helps to establish the forms of their character you are rolling with. Also, I really like 'Rainbow the Bearded', I wonder which color her facial hair would be 

First off, thanks very much! Second, all the colours.

As for this chapter, Rainbow well summed up the first half or so for me:

Alright, well, could you at least tell me what just happened? It's all a total blur...

It was a little bit more confusing than I'd like, but you mostly smoothened it up with the explanation later. 

I was going for something confusing, disorienting, and difficult to understand, but if it was that bad, I'll have a look through the scene and consider revising it. No promises though!

Again, sorry it took me so long to respond!

8320293
In answer to your first question, the guard estimated.

In answer to number two, I didn't aim for any particular reference there, but I'm curious as to what you think it was referring to?

aren't the guards supposed to be less prone to fear? they are supposed to be the second to go into battle (when the Elements aren't needed)

Of course they are, it'd probably take them a hell of a lot to be scared of the average pony. However, Luna isn't your average. An alicorn of her power could wipe the average royal guard from the face of existence with little effort, and they all know that. Remember, at this point she hasn't been back very long, and Luna Eclipsed hasn't taken place yet, ponies are still quite scared of her.

Besides that, maybe he fears for his job.

Your fourth question is 'would I currently like help with proofreading', I assume?

If so, I'd say it wouldn't be worth your time right now, considering how split I am between this and other projects. It's when I'm writing updates at a fast pace that a second pair of eyes really helps, otherwise I'm fairly confident in my ability to self edit, as I do with all of my stories, and always have up until now.

Of course, this isn't to say that I don't miss mistakes, I certainly do. However, I'd rather look for assistance when this story is once again receiving solid updates, rather than right now.

Speaking of which, I'd like to apologise for the lack of updates over the past month. I recently began working on multiple projects (some of which are listed here), and as a result I'm having to reorganise my priorities to make sure everything's getting done on time. Combine that with my personal life and the result is a fair amount of shit to do in very little time.

Luckily, I plan to pick up the pace with this story again soon! Thanks to everyone who is being patient, I'm eager to get back to writing this.

AAIQU

[Ice Star]

h e l p f u l 👍