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Call a Pegasus a Hippogriff: Difference between revisions

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Call a Pegasus a Hippogriff (view source)

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So your characters are on an adventure in a [[Magical Land]], and they naturally run into a mythical creature. Said creature is then identified in the text or dialogue by the name of a similar (or not) mythical being or fantasy creature. Cue a moment of confusion for the viewer.
 
Could be employed just to underline in red crayon that [[Our Monsters Are Different|Your Monsters Are Different]]. Alternatively, of course, the writer [[Did Not Do the Research]] -- ''or'' did [[Viewers Are Geniuses|a little too much research]], finding an extremely obscure name or form of a familiar creature. This is a common cheat when fishing for names for [[Palette Swap]] [[Underground Monkey|Underground Monkeys]]s.
 
This isn't quite [[Sadly Mythtaken]] as the very fact that the writer ''knows'' that mythical creatures have specific names implies doing some research. (Sadly Mythtaken is more for [[The Theme Park Version]] / Disneyfication of classic myths.)
 
In case you're wondering, the most commonly accepted generic term for [[Winged Horse|Winged Horses]]s is "''pterripi''". However they're often simply called "pegasi/pegasus" after the most famous example -- seeexample—see [[A Kind of One]].
 
Compare [[Istanbul (Not Constantinople)]], which is similar but for place names.
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* In [[E. Nesbit]]'s ''The Book Of Beasts'', the hero must summon a creature identified as a hippogriff to save his city from a dragon. The creature that appears is what most people would identify as a pegasus, a winged horse. To be fair, you can't say that a hippogriff ''isn't'' a winged horse (or that a pegasus isn't technically [[Mix-and-Match Critters|part horse, part bird]] for that matter). It's also possible that Nesbit figured that the word pegasus must only refer to ''[[A Kind of One|the]]'' Pegasus; this was ages before [[My Little Pony]] remember.
** Actually Pliny the Elder mentioned Pegasi living in Aegypt. So the idea of numbers of Winged Horses existing is [[Older Than Print]].
* An older example is Frank Stockton's short story, ''The Griffin and the Minor Canon'' from 1885, in which the eponymous monster -- bymonster—by its description -- isdescription—is [[Our Gryphons Are Different|clearly a dragon]]. The story might actually be considered a [[Lampshade Hanging]] on this trope, as the dragon sees a statue of a griffin and assumes that (since it also has four legs, wings, ''etc''.) he must be of the same species and that "griffin" is what humans call him. Got all that?
** Actually, it's more accurately a [[Our Dragons Are Different|wyvern or wyrm]] , as it has only two legs:
{{quote|It had a large head, with enormous open mouth and savage teeth; from its back arose great wings, armed with sharp hooks and prongs; it had stout legs in front, with projecting claws; but there were no legs behind,--the body running out into a long and powerful tail, finished off at the end with a barbed point. This tail was coiled up under him, the end sticking up just back of his wings. <ref> Oddly enough, though, in a later passage, "The monster had just awakened, and rising to his fore-legs and shaking himself, he said that he was ready to go into the town." It has fore-legs and no hind-legs?</ref>}}
** Sir [[wikipedia:Arthur Charles Fox-Davies|Arthur Charles Fox-Davies]] warns against confusing the two in his ''A Complete Guide to Heraldry'', so it was apparently a common Victorian mistake.
* One of the stranger examples is in the book ''Thorn Ogres of Hagwood''. A character wanders into the action about halfway through the story. He is a short humanoid with a big, big beard and he carries a lot of different tools and has a great talent for metalwork. He is [[Our Dwarves Are All the Same|identified as a dwa...]] no, wait, he is a Pooka. [[Trickster Mentor|Pookas]] technically can [[A Form You Are Comfortable With|appear as dwarves]] but, as you may recall from ''[[Harvey]]'', they also tend to be a lot weirder.
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* Although she never appears in the stories in person, it's made pretty clear that [[H.P. Lovecraft|H.P. Lovecraft's]] Mother Hydra has nothing to do with the Hydra of the Greek myth.
* In David Weber's ''[[Safehold]]'' books, the humans who have settled on the planet Safehold have named many local animals after mythical beasts. Examples include the kraken (described as a cross between a squid and a shark, fitting the latter's place in Safeholdian ecology), the [[Our Dragons Are Different|dragon]] (a massive, six-legged animal that comes in both carnivorous and herbivorous varieties), and the wyvern (''four''-winged flyers that are the Safeholdian analogue of birds).
* [[Hell's Gate|Arcana]] has "[[Unicorn|Unicorns]]s," which resemble the usual image of unicorns only in that they have a single horn and are roughly horse-sized and shaped. They are black, with disproportionately long legs, powerful hindquarters, and ears like a bobcat -- andbobcat—and possess a mouthful of long tusks and sharp, carnivorous teeth.
* There are carnivorous "Alicorns" (also called "One-Horns", but guess what unicorn means) in the ''Elvenbane'' series as well. Traditionally, this word refers to either [[Winged Unicorn|winged unicorns]] or the horn of a unicorn, although it's likely a result of centuries of [[Recursive Translation]] from English <-> French (unicorn -> ''une icorne'' -> ''l'icorne'' -> a licorn -> alicorn).
** Some of the main characters are shapeshifting superintelligent dragons who are, in some details, [[Our Dragons Are Different|quite different]].
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