Wizard Baruffio and the Wingardium Leviosa Charm Revisited

[secca_pk]

No: HPFGUIDX 160025

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "MercuryBlue" 
<MercuryBlue144 at ...> wrote:
>
> > Nor does 
> > calling it a typo; (it should have been "f instead of s") as that 
> > makes more sense "Wingardium Leviofa" -- I don't buy this one 
either.
> 
> I'm sorry, I thought it was obvious. I already posted a link to a 
> picture on Wikipedia of the Bill of Rights. Post 159752. The words in 
> big letters across the top are obviously 'Congress of the United 
> States', but the first word looks very much like 'Congrefs'. Old 
> documents are weird that way. I always figured Baruffio was reading 
> his spell out of a book and thought an F was actually a very-similar-
> appearing S.
> 
> MercuryBlue
>

Secca replies:

Yes, I am aware that the long 's' used to be printed in a manner 
similar to an 'f'. As a matter of fact, lazy publishers would simply 
use an 'f' many times. This explains is how someone might mistakenly 
say 'f' instead of 's'. It seems *much* lefs likely, to me, that the 
reverse mistake would be made, but I accept this is a possible 
explanation as to /why/ Barussio made the mistake...

But, this does not address the issue that there is no 'F' 
in 'Wingardium Leviosa'. So I'm still trying to guess /what/ Baruffio 
mispoke, not /why/, because whatever he mispronounced resulted 
specifically in a 'buffalo'. I'm aware that there is either no answer, 
or that the answer may be too obscure to guess, but I like this sort of 
hunt...

Tally-ho!