Warlock/Wizard - was Asking JKR just one question

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 119515


Ginger wrote:  
> <snip>
> Back to the whole wizard/warlock thing. It struck me that we have 
> never heard of a young warlock. Young as in underage. Perhaps 
> wizard is used like we would say "guy" and warlock is used as we 
> would say "man". There's not much difference at all when speaking of 
> men, but guys can be any age.  
> 
> It would explain how Harry can easily detect them (duh, they're 
> adults) and how the descriptions vary so much.  

Carol responds:
And yet we never hear Snape or Lupin or Black or even Flitwick
referred to as warlocks. It must be something other than adult males.

Certainly Pippin is on the right track that "warlock" is an older word
for "wizard" (I think that it's male only and parallel to "witch").
But if "warlock" applies mostly to older wizards like Perkins (or
titles of positions once held primarily by men, though the history of
Hogwarts suggests a level of sexual equality in conflict with this
idea), then the "rowdy warlocks" must be old men behaving like boys.

Carol, who thinks that "guy" refers mostly to teenage males who are
too young to be called men but think they're too old to be called boys