Need a new word

[skip.knox]

Hey folks, I'm looking for a prefix that means magical, to attach to other words.

For example, paleodemography would be the populations of ancient peoples. So, what sort of prefix could I use that would mean magic?

Para comes to mind. Para-archeology would be the study of physical artifacts of the use of magic. But the prefix feels weak and is too associated in my mind with parapsychology and other pseudo-science. I'm looking for something that is more grounded. Something derived from wizard or magic.

Clumsily, it would be magico-archeology, arcano-archeology. Yuck. None of it works. It's gotta work with vowels and well as consonants. I suppose I could reconcile with compound words. Thaumaturgical archeology sounds fairly imposing, but thaumaturgy is rather narrower than "magic" and magical archeology sounds like someone uses magic in their doing of archeology.

Any ideas?

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Hmm, I have no idea. You could use something like "archaeomancy..." But that's archaeological magic, not magical archaeology. Magearchaeology? that sounds clumsy to me...

What I would do is come up with a whole new word for magic to use throughout the story and make a prefix from that. But that might not work in your situation...

 

[Miskatonic]

Anything with -mancy on it means it is some form of divination.

 

[cydare]

The Greek word for magic is 'magos' if I'm not mistaken. Perhaps that could work? Magosarcheology. Magosdemography.

 

[skip.knox]

Actually it turns out that thaumatos just means magic--making "wonders" to be precise. I think I'll probably go with that. It won't be for any of my fiction; it's for my pseudo-historical essays on my Altearth site.

For the information I thank the redoubtable Webster. A very long time ago, nearly 30 years now, I was in a bookstore in a mall (yes, really!). Waldenbooks, I think. Anyway, they were having a sale and I picked up a Webster's Unabridged for the ridiculous price of twenty bucks. It's one of those massive tomes--over two thousand pages--that you used to be able to find in any school library, complete with appendices of maps, lists, tables of weights and measures, a timeline of Canada (!), and so on. Acres of fun. But its most constant use for me is to do quick etymology research.

Best twenty bucks I ever spent.