Before Alicorn, what did you call the mash-up of a Pegasus and a Unicorn?

[Aitsuki]

Mmm, I read Piers Anthony's "Chronicles of Xanth", and in his books, unicorns and centaurs with wings are alicorns and alicentaurs.... so I was calling Celestia and Luna alicorns the whole time.

Post Merge: May 05, 2014, 11:04:01 PM

I think that I generally called them winged unicorns- although that is a bit of a mouthful.  I think that Piers Anthony in one of the Xanth books called them Alicorns though.

YES! 8D Another Xanth reader???

[sd_dreamcrystal]

Never heard of that book series lol

Alicorn may refer to:

The horn of a unicorn or its substance, which was considered to have properties of healing and purification in the Middle Ages.
A winged unicorn. The term alicorn came into use in this meaning in the late 20th century.

I will note that some of us even after this never really heard the term Alicorn till FiM (like myself I never heard of it as a kid)

[Epona]

Mmm, I read Piers Anthony's "Chronicles of Xanth", and in his books, unicorns and centaurs with wings are alicorns and alicentaurs.... so I was calling Celestia and Luna alicorns the whole time.

Post Merge: May 05, 2014, 11:04:01 PM

I think that I generally called them winged unicorns- although that is a bit of a mouthful.  I think that Piers Anthony in one of the Xanth books called them Alicorns though.

YES! 8D Another Xanth reader???

Another Piers Anthony fan over here. And yes the only reason I started reading it was the blue Unicorn on the cover.  I should dig them out and re-read them

[BabiChuld]

I'll be honest, to me it was a Unicorn, with or without wings haha ^_^ 

[Ninox]

Winged unicorns.

I was surprised to discover that the Latin root of the "ali-" in "alicorn" actually does mean "wing", but I still tend to stick with "winged unicorns" more out of habit than anything else. Strangely, there's not much consensus as to what the origins of the original "alicorn" were. One possible explanation is that it's derived from the French "à licorne", meaning "of the unicorn."

Interestingly, the mythology of Cantabria (an autonomous community in northern Spain) features a creature called the alicornio. This is a horselike creature with a horn growing from its forehead, and it also has wings...

...however, these wings are growing out of its feet.