Fizzy the "Alicorn" - Animation Error

[QueenGusty]

Gusty-stepping on dogs since the 80s like a boss

I'd love to see someone do that Fizzy as a custom though, she'd be very cool. Guess I was talking hogwash when I said Celstia and Luna were our first canon alicorns

Carrie

[TwistedWindSox]

Why don't people like the term alicorn?

Because the term technically means the substance that a unicorn's horn is made from, I think. I don't know how it went from that to meaning a pegasus/unicorn cross, but oh well.

Lol. ala - is latin for wing. Corn is latin for horn. - that's where alicorn came from. As for making the term popular in that usage you can blame Piers Anthony.

Hmmn. The original meaning IS the horn of a unicorn, as per the dictionary and various websites.
But, it's been adapted lately to mean pegasus/unicorn cross, probably for the very reason you stated. Ala being similar to ali, and corn mening horn.

and, just to back myself up so I don't feel foolish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn#Alicorn

[hathorcat]

Why don't people like the term alicorn?

Because the term technically means the substance that a unicorn's horn is made from, I think. I don't know how it went from that to meaning a pegasus/unicorn cross, but oh well.

Lol. ala - is latin for wing. Corn is latin for horn. - that's where alicorn came from. As for making the term popular in that usage you can blame Piers Anthony.

Do you know I had never thought it through this way - all of a sudden alicorn makes wonderful sense. And I ll go with Xanth as justification for the term too!

[Al-1701]

Though, wouldn't it be Alacorn (ala+corn), not Alicorn then?

[EStRanger]

Lol. ala - is latin for wing. Corn is latin for horn. - that's where alicorn came from. As for making the term popular in that usage you can blame Piers Anthony.

Dunno about Piers Anthony use of the word, but I remember learning the term "alicorn" as a name for winged unicorns from reading really old (and pretty bad) fantasy books published around the 40s, when fantasy novels were super dry and full of themselves. (It was all our crappy library had till they expanded the building. Don't judge, haha.) No wonder I switched to Terry Pratchett and never looked back. But I remember being really confused when I later learned "alicorn" as a name for a unicorn's horn since I knew it as a winged unicorn first. "Don't these guys know an alicorn is a winged unicorn?" I think I had much internal rage over that as a child till I learned it was okay for the word to have two meanings.

To Al-1701: it's pretty common for words to change spelling over time, 'specially when they're combined or translated from another language, so maybe that's what happened there?