Half-Blood Prince

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 183878

Carol:
> > Teen!Snape somehow learned Latin (maybe Tobias sent him to a
Catholic parochial school <g>) or at least enough Latin to create
spells with appropriate names. Corpus, of course, means "body." The
adjective "livis" [should be "levis"--that's a typo] means "light."
Putting them together and dropping the awkward "e" [should be
"s"--another typo!] gives "Levicorpus" ("light body"). 
> 
> Geoff:
> Interestingly, I have always read this spell as incorporating an
element from "levo" - to raise, i.e. I interpret the spell as "Raise
body".

Carol:
Yes, you must be right. I couldn't think of an appropriate verb and
"levo" didn't show up when I tried "hover." (I didn't think to try
"lift," or to try "levo" to see if there was such a verb. "Levis" was
the closest I could come to what I was looking for.) My grandson has
borrowed my Latin dictionaries and I was reduced to looking online
using the Latin Dictionary and Grammar Aid.
> 
> Carol: 
> > for whom "cut always" means "cut always" (unless you know the
countercurse!)
> 
> Geoff:
> At least we read this one the same way.

Carol:

Hooray!

Carol, accepting your reading of Levicorpus, which would have been
mine if I'd found "levo"