of the human race -- hinder real communication. . . . Magic words emanate from the heart.15 The rich heritage of magic words need not fade away16, and certainly no magician should cringe over the terms of his art, much less turn a deaf ear to his sonorous legacy. This book seeks to reach deep into the glimmering treasure-chest of magic words and reinstate dignity to a dusty, subsidiary treasury -- the little jewel box full of terms that have lost their sparkle over the years. It also seeks to celebrate and codify the new magic words that ma gicians are, with a wave of a wand or the tip of a hat, adding to the lexicon every day. Just as the Russian poet Andrei Bely "enthused over nothing less than the literal magic of words and urged that the force of primitive incantations be recreated"17 in poetry, this dictionary is testament to the magic of words and urges magicians to reinvest their incantations with that primitive power everyone remembers at the deepest level. The Vocabulary of Ritual Adults have lost touch with the mystery and magic of words. -- Thomas Armstrong, Seven Kinds of Smart (1999) As we shall see, the infinite world of magic has room enough for both reverence and self-parody. This dictionary celebrates fun, new forms of magic wordplay, especially those humorous send-ups of the old standards, like ripening abracadabra into have a banana or dancing hocus pocus around to hokey pokey. Clever wordplay -- a sort of verbal magic wand -- keeps the culture of magic rich, vital, and growing . . . and, of course, entertaining. (Remember, a magician is nothing if not a performer.) Irreverent comical twists serve a legitimate purpose. Nevertheless, the exotic, historical terminology in its authentic form has by no means been rendered useless. Philosopher and law professor William Ian Miller posits that cryptic terms lend an important air of "inaccessibility" to our rituals.18 A magic show is without question its own form of ritual. And Miller defines a "Big R ritual" as one that involves "something that we call, if we do not fear being struck down by some offended power, hocus-pocus" and that can be "distinguished from the small rituals of daily life by a sacred separation." Miller points out that Rituals are often carried out in a language we don't understand: as when I pray in Hebrew or Catholics used to pray in Latin, or when Protestants recently used the King James Bible, or when 15 Esoteric Magic and the Cabala (2002) 16 As Roland Barthes has said, "These words, whose magic is dead for us, can be renewed" (The Rustle of Language [1986]). 17 Thomas Seifrid, The Word Made Self: Russian Writings On Language, 1860-1930 (2005) 18 Faking It (200 )