Is there an “N word” for magi?

I listen to a podcast called Lexicon Valley, which is about the way language changes. In a recent episode, the presenter suggested the words “gangster” and “gangsta” are now separate words. When you think about them, he posits, you are not thinking about the same sorts of stereotypes. Similarly, he then revels in breaking the American taboo against the “n word”. He’s black and is interested in the taboo here. He suggests the “n word” when said as a racial slur, ends in “-er”, like gangster, and that when black men are using it as a synonym for “buddy”, it ends in an “a” sound. He believes they are two, separated, words.  This, for him, is the solution to the “why can’t I use the slur if black people are using it?” question: they aren’t the same word.

This led me to wonder if there was a term which was offensive if used by outsiders, but accepted my magi within the Oder, and I think I’ve found one. It was hiding in plain sight, all along.  It’s “wizard”.

Now, some people will tell you it just means “wise man” and that’s superficially true. What they are missing is that the -ard suffix is a perjorative: it’s a mark of disdain in English.  Look at the other words where “ard” means a man, and you’ll notice they aren’t respectable people. Bastard. Dullard. Drunkard. Coward. Sluggard. Wizard is a term of abuse, that magi seem to throw around anyway.

The one word that initially seemed to escape this meaning of -ard is the personal name “Richard”, which means “king who is hearty”, but the abbreviation for Richard is Dick. That doesn’t have its current, genital-related meaning in print until the 19th Century.  As it happens I’m listening to the Canterbury Tales at the moment, and it has a verb in it, to “dighte”, meaning to have sex with, which may throw even this back to the 14th Century.

So, I’d suggest “wizard” is a term magi use only among themselves. The title to outsiders is magus or maga, and the use of the insider term is a mark of fellowship.