A posteriori

ORTHOEPY: In linguistics, the study of pronunciation as it relates to spelling. A linguist who specializes in this area is an orthoepist.

ORTHOGRAPHY: (1) The linguistic term for a writing system that represents the sounds or words of a particular languages by making visible marks on some surface (Algeo 325). (2) A systematic method of spelling.

O-STEM: A class of Old English nouns with feminine gender.

OSTRANENIE: See defamiliarization.

OTHER WORLD, THE: A motif in folklore and mythology in which an alternative world exists in conjunction with the physical world. This world is typically occupied by mysterious or unknowable beings that resemble humanity but who are alien in their motivations and concerns, often toying or playing with mortals for their own amusement in one moment, or showering them with gifts and benefits the next. In Old Irish myths, for instance, a tall and frightening race of Elves (the Sidh, pronounced like the modern English word "she") lived underneath the hills. A similar race, the Alfar, appear in Norse mythology. In some myths, the race is divided into good and evil races, the Blessed or Unblessed Courts, or the "Light-Elves" and "Dark-Elves" (liosalfar and svartalfar), but in most accounts the elvish races are merely capricious and unpredictable in their behavior.

Anthropological studies note how primitive societies often consider liminal (in-between) times and places to be dangerous or magically charged, and this holds true for the Other World motif. Journey back and forth between the human world and the realms of Faerie might be achieved at liminal times. Examples of such times might be Beltain or Samhain, the two holidays marking the transition from winter to summer and vice-versa, or at sunset and sunrise, a liminal time between day and night, or at noon or midnight. At such moments of flux, gates into fairyland might open in hillsides or in lake ways. Likewise, liminal spaces might provide permanent entrance into the Other World, transitional places that were neither one location or another. Suspect places or areas include Ymp-trees (which are artificially grafted blends of two tree species), doorways (which are neither indoors nor outdoors), sea-shores (which are neither sea nor land), fords for running water (which are neither rock nor river), boundary markers, gates, crossroads, graveyards, gibbets, and the north side of churches. Finally, unusual geological or architectural features were thought to be dangerous spots where ruptures might manifest into the other world, including barrow-mounds (cf. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), standing stones, unusually large or twisted trees, and fairy-rings (circular growths of mushrooms).

Often folklore involves fairy visitations to the human world, such as the late medieval belief in "trooping fairies" who would ride on hunts or parades through the forest. Other examples are the collective changeling legends, in which elves would kidnap human children and leave behind one of their sickly or elderly elves in the crib disguised via illusion. (In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, for instance, one of the quarrels between King Oberon and Titania is the question about who has ownership over a kidnapped human child.) The other world was often depicted as mirroring the human world in its organization. (Thus, in Chinese mythology, the Celestial Hierarchy had a court with court-officials exactly identical to court of the Tang dynasty, and in medieval romances, the other world might have a feudal government complete with castles, laborers, nobles and knights to match that of Europe.)

Often the otherworldly inhabitants only mimic the outward semblance of humanity, but their actual motivations may be nonsensical or contradictory (witness Through the Looking Glass, more commonly known as Alice in Wonderland).

If the supernatural region is inhabited by the souls of the dead, scholars typically call it the underworld rather than the Other World, though in actual mythology, the distinction is often blurred, such as in the Middle English Sir Orfeo, where the fairylands are inhabited by the mangled corpses of the dead. See also Descent into the Underworld.

OUTLAW: An individual determined by a council vote to be an outlaw at a thing or an althing was considered outside the normal bounds of kinship relations in Iceland. He was considered outside the law (hence the term), and anyone who met him would be allowed to kill him or rob him without repercussions from the rest of the Viking community. Since the medieval government of Iceland did not have an official bureaucracy of police, sherrifs, or gendarmerie, much less a national army to enforce its law, the declaration of outlaw status was a common punishment. It allowed an entire community to take the law in its own hands, in its own time. Many of the major heroes in Icelandic sagas are outlaws or become outlaws over the course of the saga.

OUTRIDE: See discussion under sprung rhythm.

OUTSIDE SPEAKER: The "speaker" of a poem or story presented in third-person point of view, i.e., the imaginary voice that speaks of other characters in the third person (as he / she / they) without ever revealing the speaker's own identity or relationship to the narrative.

OV LANGUAGE (pronounced "oh-vee"): A language that tends to place the grammatical object before the verb in a sentence. Japanese is an example of an OV language. Contrast with VO languages.

OVERGENERALIZATION: In linguistics, the introduction of a nonstandard or previously non-existent spelling or verb form when a speaker or writer makes an analogy to a regular spelling or a regular verb. For instance, a child who says "I *broked it" has created a new verb form (*broked) by an analogy to how regular verbs form. He has overgeneralized rather than learned the irregular past participle broken and the irregular past tense broke. Cf. hypercorrection and linguistic analogy.

OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY: This fat, twelve+ volume work functions as an historical dictionary of English. It is generally considered the most authoritative and scholarly dictionary of English available--with nearly 300,000 word entries in its most recent form. Scholars refer to it lovingly as the OED. The project arose out of meetings of the Philological Society of London in 1857, and in January of 1858, the society passed a resolution to begin the OED's creation. The task was to record every word that could be found in English from around 1000 CE and to exhibit its history: i.e, where the word first appeared in surviving writings, and how its spelling, meaning, and form changed across the years. This would be illustrated by quoting example texts using the word in each decade. Herbert Coleridge functioned as the first editor, but medievalist F. J. Furnivall oversaw much of the initial work. The OED's first installment ("A") came out in 1884, and the complete first edition came out piecemeal over time. In 1933, a supplementary volume followed the complete set. A newer four volume supplement came out piecemeal between 1972 and 1986--and an amalgamated second edition in 1989. Oxford University Press is currently working on an exciting third edition.

OXYMORON (plural oxymora, also called paradox): Using contradiction in a manner that oddly makes sense on a deeper level. Simple or joking examples include such oxymora as jumbo shrimp, sophisticated rednecks, and military intelligence. The richest literary oxymora seem to reveal a deeper truth through their contradictions. These oxymora are sometimes called paradoxes. For instance, "without laws, we can have no freedom." Shakespeare's Julius Caesar also makes use of a famous oxymoron: "Cowards die many times before their deaths" (2.2.32). Richard Rolle uses an almost continuous string of oxymora in his Middle English work, "Love is Love That Lasts For Aye." Click here for more examples of oxymora.