A tisket, a tasket, a queen's head in a basket.

[truepenny]

I have encountered a shining example of the moss-troll problem in the goblin book, viz. and to wit, the word "guillotine." Instead of merely brooding about it, I decided to burst into song make a poll.

[Poll #1506528]

Feel free to expound in the comments if you need to.


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*From the Turkey City Lexicon:

“Call a Rabbit a Smeerp“

A cheap technique for false exoticism, in which common elements of the real world are re-named for a fantastic milieu without any real alteration in their basic nature or behavior. “Smeerps” are especially common in fantasy worlds, where people often ride exotic steeds that look and act just like horses. (Attributed to James Blish.)

Comments

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

This is more or less how I feel about it. (I was going to comment about sandwiches, had you not beaten me to it.)

I could be happy with a smeerp if it were good enough -- there's some grim humour in my mind to calling it a "severance" -- but it's damn hard to invent words for familiar things that will sound plausible enough not to jar.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Well, I have the added complication (note the value-neutral term) of the narrative being fairly saturated with a made-up language. Which--as these replies have helped make much clearer to me--means my answer is to invent the elvish word for guillotine and use that. Which I should probably have seen from the start, but the poll was more fun. *g*

[mevincula.livejournal.com]

it occurs to me that the word you might want is the German for guillotine, Fallbeil. the Nazis after all guillotined many more people (about 16,000) than the French Revolution ever did. (Hitler personally ordered 20 guillotines dispatched to the prisons).

and goblins seem so very Germanic to me ;)

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

My brain went to "decapitus", although the "severance" could be used for things other than heads, so would be more general.