Sticks and Stones, Feathers, Charms and Bones by The Silver Elves

Aphorism is about a supernatural high school where each student must choose a kanji character whose meaning, combined with the power of the student's imagination, will later be used as the student's weapon in various battles and trials.

Both Urd and Keiichi are frequent victims of this, with Skuld's favorite insults for them being 'idiot' and 'pervert', respectively. While not very powerful, it appears to involve enough force to stagger people.

Skuld from Ah! My Goddess gains the ability to forcefully 'print' her words on people or things.

Works using this trope will often discuss The Power of Language. If words provoke a fight by being hurtful in the ordinary way, that’s a Fisticuff-Provoking Comment. If the words themselves have no inherent power, but a character is still harmed by them, that's Verbal Weakness. Also compare Speak of the Devil and The Scottish Trope. Harsh Word Impact is a metafictional version. Contrast Make Me Wanna Shout, where it's the act of speaking that causes the damage, and the words shouted are secondary if they're even intelligible. Compare to Brown Note, which includes sounds, images and larger written works that have powerful negative effects on the audience. Contrast and compare Magical Incantation. Compare to I Know Your True Name (which was split from this). In some visual media this is sometimes displayed with a Sight Gag of the written word impacting the character.Ī subtrope of Language Of Magic. Put enough will and maybe some Applied Phlebotinum behind carefully chosen words and you can potentially deliver spiritual hurting as well as physical.

In a fairly frequent variation of this, the word itself is variable and the character themself has the ability to imbue it with power. Offensive-leaning words frequently hit for massive damage and may be a justification for Calling Your Attacks and Invocation. Other defining features: words of power tend to be comparatively short utterances - short phrases at most - that one can fire and forget rather quickly instead of a longer incantation.

While words of power may be part of a Language Of Magic, it is not always so, or if they are it may not be explicitly said to be so, or the language in question may be a lost or fragmented one.

With the Language Of Magic you can write spells while words of power are the spell. Words of power have fairly rigidly defined effects.Words of Power may be a part of a Language of Magic but are distinct in several ways. Often paired and sometimes lumped with the power of True Names, words of power are common parts of a wizard's bag of tricks. Another magic trope that is Older Than Dirt, the idea of words that hold magic power unto themselves has been around since Ancient Egypt.

Sticks and Stones, Feathers, Charms and Bones by The Silver Elves