Warlock or Wizard

[catlady_de_los_angeles]

No: HPFGUIDX 41830

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Catherine "gte510i" wrote:

<< In the non-potterverse. I had always thought that a witch and a 
wizard were two different things entirely. >>

I also think so, the "wizard" being an example of book-learning and 
the "witch" an example of folk-learning (that is, she may be 
illiterate but learned from helping her teacher, such as her mother 
or grandmother) [and the "Witch" is a Wiccan, which is a whole 
'nother thing). 

I think the wizarding folk should have been called "wizard" and 
"wizardess" (or "male wizard" and "female wizard"). And Hogwarts 
should have just been "Hogwarts School of Wizardry". Then I would 
think the words were right; also there wouldn't have been [outsiders 
with] annoying confusion between HP and Wicca or between HP and 
Satanism. 

But it seems ***JKR*** grew up believing that "witch" and "wizard" 
are female and male words for the same thing: I gathered that from 
interviews where she said that, as children, she and her sister Diane 
and their neighbors Ian and Vicki Potter used to dress up in costumes 
to play witches and wizards.

So, in Potterverse, "wizard" is a male mage. It seems to be used 
equivalently to "man", as for example the description of Ron's 
Chudley Cannons "posters of the same seven witches and wizards, all 
wearing bright orange robes".