Wizard Baruffio and the Wingardium Leviosa Charm Revisited

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 160123

Carol earlier:
> <snip>
> > The word "bison" (or "bisont")was already in existence and 
> > referred, not to an American buffalo (probably European wizards
> > knew no more than European Muggles of the existence of the
> > Americas at this point) but to a European buffalo also called a 
> > wisent. 
> 
> Secca responds:
> I hadn't thought to check if the word 'bison' were in use yet! 
> Thanks for this info.

Carol again:
You're welcome. Seems that I'm more convinced by your explanation than
you are, though.
> 
Carol earlier:
> > Carol, whose first reaction to the wizard Baruffio's blunder 
> > was what JKR surely intended it to be, a hearty roar of laughter
> 
> Secca responds: 
> Aha! See, now we come to the crux of the matter! I did not laugh at 
> all. My initial reaction, reading it the first time, and every time 
> since, has always been "Hunh? I don't get it." (Originally I thought 
> it must just be referring to some British idiom)
> 
> Researching into this lately I keep running across Harry Potter 
> sites that have discussed this same quote over the years (including 
> the HP4GU archives). It seems that there are others like me, who 
> have always been bothered/stumped by this quote -- and there are 
> also many others, like you, who have always found it funny, and are 
> a bit puzzled by all the brouhaha. If my first reaction had been to 
> laugh, I don't think I would care about this now in the least. 
> Humour is in the eye of the beholder??? 
<snip>
> I had great hopes for "Bifonte/Bisonte" from the portuguese...
> 'Bifonte' *is* a word in portuguese -- a very modern, corporate word 
> meaning 'dual-sourced', so I wasn't planning on mentioning it -- 
> then I found a site that used it to mean 'Two-faced'. Aha! I 
> thought, and started to run with theories of Baruffio and his 
> Potuguese Veritaserum... only to discover that it had been a typo 
> and the word intended had been 'bif/r/onte'and is Spanish for 'two-
> faced', not Portuguese -- ah well
> 
> Well, for anybody still interested in all of this, I must admit that 
> I have had a reversal in my opinion. When I started all of this, one 
> of the theories that I did *not* like was the "It is a typo, Jo just 
> meant to write "said 'f' instead of 's'." But I have come to realize 
> how easy it is to get confused by the quote, having done so myself. 
> I now believe that Jo, with her history of (understandable) 
> inattention to little unimportant details (and inexact maths) -- 
> simply got confused as well.
> 
> I now stand firmly in the "It was a typo" school." If we re-write 
> the quote to read "said 'f' instead of 's'" then the 'answer' to the 
> riddle (for those of us who could not just laugh at the surface 
> wordplay) Could be one of two things -- both seeming much simpler in 
> concept than the flights I was going to to try to make the original 
> quote work:
> 
> 1) This means Baruffio could have simply said /Wingardium Leviofa/
> and, in Jo's world 'ofa' somehow means buffalo(remember /Levicorpus/ 
> levitates a body). Or not, but there is at least an 's' in the spell.
> 
> 2) OR , in Jo's world, there is a thing called a 'bussalo', which is 
> something that a wizard might use, and Baruffio wanted one. Hence, 
> the now infamous misquote was --
> 
> "Accio Buffalo -- oops I meant Bussalo.." WHAM!
> 
> I like number two, personally.
> 
> The funny thing is 'bussalo' has been discussed at great length by 
> many people looking for the 'answer' to this riddle -- but as it 
> does not work unless you declare the original Flitwick quote to be a 
> typo, it bothered me. Now, by putting the two together -- Typo and 
> Bussalo -- I come up with something that I can accept. 
> 
> I see that you are all ecstatic. =)
>

Carol responds:
Funny (or not), I think the bison/bifon explanation suffices. IMO,
Baruffio meant to use the spell "Bifon!" ("surround") but said "Bison"
instead and ended up with a bison (= buffalo) on his chest. Unlike
bussalo/buffalo, no typo is required for this error, and it's
explained by the elongated medieval s, which looks like an f. 

Ever try to read those old documents? 

Of Mans Firft Difobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whofe mortal taft(e)
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loff of EDEN. . . .

Not supposed to be funny, but who can help laughing when it's read
aloud with f's in place of s's?

For the record, I did wonder when I first read the anecdote which
spell Baruffio blew, but what made me laugh was not his
mispronunciation but the image of a wizard with a buffalo on his
chest. (Unlike a Muggle, he'd have survived the, erm, encounter.)

Carol, sure that JKR had nothing so esoteric as Portuguese/Spanish
Veritaserum in mind and that Baruffio simply misread "s" as "f" and
consequently mispronounced an ordinary Latin-based spell