5mo ago

TIL about Titivillus a medieval demon that would feed on misspellings, mispronounced syllables and mumbled words. He was considered a natural enemy and tempter of scribes.

blog.lostartpress.com My Old Nemesis Titivillus - Lost Art Press

Back in 2016 while working on blog posts about the woodworkers depicted in misericords I encountered a devilish creature holding a scroll of paper. At the

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I initially wrote 'temptor' in the title but then double checked. Not today, Titivillus.
- Caveat Temptor

Those medieval people were silly and backward. Why would anyone think a demon would drag them to hell just because the mispeeled a
- Ah, so that’s what they mean by “the road to hell is paved with good in tensions”
- Oh no. Now we’ll never hear from FlyingSquid again. RIP, fiend, we’ll mis
- I think you a word
- You wouldn't think how far clerical errors could go when it was laboriously copied by hand by exhausted monks in candlelight.
  The whole Mary was a virgin thing (aka immaculate conception) was started because someone mistranslated young woman as (sexual) virgin. In some languages those terms are really close (even today for example in German: junge Frau Vs Jungfrau).

Based on sheer numbers and the inclusion of "internet speak", that must be one well fed and powerful demon.
- With the anount of should of/ would of I see I have to think the demon is dead.
- Yes, once the internet became popular I imagine he became powerful enough to overthrow Lucifer and take over Hell. There's a place there where the smallest detail of what you write or say is nitpicked. It's hell for people who aren't good at grammar and spelling and heaven for grammar nazis.
- To be fair some languages like English or French have so horrendous and outdated orthography that I'm not going to fault the writers.
  Writers. Why is there even a W in that word still? Ridiculous, write?

Guess I found my spirit animal

MFer got obliterated by MSWord spell check
- That's what you think. He thrives on British English, so every time MS Word autocorrects colour to color or aluminium to aluminum, he is further sustained.
  
  why did they stop at "aluminum"? why don't they have "magnesum", "barum", or "radum"?
  why don't nfl games take place in a "stadum"? why is the size between small and large not a "medum"?
  either their table salt ahould contain sodum or their treatment of aluminium is so dumb.

If it eats the mistakes wouldn't that be helping? I'll take the thing if no one else wants it.
- You accidentally a word

I wondar wat he's up to these daze.

Aka Mr. Vile Tits

My patron saint

It's rather ironic that his name is spelled 'Tytinillus' in the document of John the blind.

Stupid sexy Titi Villus, don't tempt my spell ing.

You've got Paul Bunyan and John Henry, but I've never heard a tall tale about a scribe or a printer.

How was there a demon of misspelling before standardized spelling?
- If there's no agreed upon standard, everyone sets their own standard.
- If you read the article you would have seen that when it was first made up it was more about going to church and singing or praying out of rote and not doing it full heartedly.

How do you misspell something before standardised spelling?
- There was some degree of standardization. Especially for important legal and religious texts alteration, even if accidental, was considered a sin/vice.
  Scribes very often simply had to produce 1:1 copies of existing texts. So the standard was right in front of them.

Would I curse in his name or praise him if I misspell something?

And that demon grew up and bought Twitter.

31 comments