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[[folder: Etymological Note ]]


The suffixes -kinesis and -kinetic seem to have been naively derived from the well-known "telekinesis"; they actually mean "motion". Literally, "hydrokinesis" would be the power to move water.

Similarly, -mancer and -mancy seem to have been derived from the well-known "necromancy", even though in the original Greek they come from the word ''manteia'', meaning "divination". The "-mancy" template originally referred to the practice of divining the future using whatever the prefix was as a medium. So a classical necromancer would ask important questions of a dead person's spirit or read the entrails of a sacrificed (dead) animal, a pyromancer would look for important symbols in flames, and so on.

The proper suffix for someone magically manipulating a substance, force, or entity would be "-urgy" and "-urge" which derives from érgon or "work" – but it's also the proper suffix for labor or manipulation of ''any'' kind, supernatural or mundane, such as surgery or metallurgy. (Or, yes, energy.) This is somewhat inconvenient for fantasy writers who want their magic to seem spiritual or otherwise distinct from the rest of nature, so consequently "-mancy" and "-kinesis" are ubiquitous and "-urgy" is nearly unheard of, aside from the occasional "thaumaturgy" (literally, "wonder-working") as a fancier word for "magic". "Theurgy" (god-working), derived from a set of real life Greco-Roman magical practices is sometimes seen in fiction too, usually denoting a kind of magic associated with prayer and religion.
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