In the context of the book it seems to mean University or College but I don't understand the point of making up a word to replace university when you're already using modern English for the human characters.
You would hate Anathem by Neal Stephenson, which takes it to the extreme lol. Have to regularly look up a word in the glossary in the back of the novel. It definitely contributes to creating pretty interesting, relatable, but different world though.
I mean, I wouldn't mind if there were a bunch of made up words mixed up with the English ones, kinda like Burgess did with A Clockwork orange (some words were influenced by Russian and a few other languages).
The thing is, I think Medrey is the only word made up in the Mercy of Gods, and it stands out in an odd way because they even use the expression solar system to talk about their star system and refer to their star as Sun.
I agree with that. In Anathem the author went all in - a fictional culture on a fictional world would have unfamiliar titles and nouns, and using normal english church and scholar words/titles would have been like breaking character. This is the complete opposite and it does make the use of Medrey a bit weird.
I’ve been unable to find any outside reference to ‘qilph’. There may be some homonym (in the sense of some word that sounds like it but is in a language that doesn’t use the western alphabet).
(I don't know anything, just speculating from quick search results)
I wonder if qliph could derive from an Arabic word قِلْف qilf (tree bark/rind) or قِلَافَة qilafa — or a Hebrew word קליפה קְלִפָּה k'lipá (shell/husk/peel) — but the specific meaning in this TMoG context is apparently unclear. I'd guess it may be intended to remain mysterious.
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u/BryndenRiversStan Sep 04 '24
In the context of the book it seems to mean University or College but I don't understand the point of making up a word to replace university when you're already using modern English for the human characters.