Some words have a force all of their own, a power that precedes them and makes even uttering them a risk; these words elicit great anticipation and the most powerful emotions—anxiety, fear, anger, and jubilation. Their use is often hedged around with elaborate rituals and taboos.
A well-known example: The ancestors of modern Europeans refused to call bears by their actual name. Instead, they invented a series of gentle circumlocutions like “the brown one” and “the honey eater.” It was as if the bear’s true name, which meant something like “the destroyer,” might conjure the thing itself from nowhere, simply by being spoken. And in the vast primeval forests of old Europe, that wasn’t a chance, however slim, you wanted to take.
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