what does it mean to call someone a unicorn
What practice Scotland, Silicon Valley, LGBTQ pride, and Jesus Christ all have in mutual? Unicorns. You read that correct, unicorns.
This connection may sound as fantastical as unicorns themselves, that mythical horse famed for the single horn it bears on its forehead. But, just a animate being as unique as a unicorn could span such a wide assortment of contexts.
Then, as well, can the give-and-takeunicorn. Since it beginning named the one-horned equine of lore around the 1200s, the word unicorn has gone on to name "a person or thing that is rare and highly valued," whether that's a billion-dollar startup—or that special someone in your life.
Where did the discussionunicorn come from?
Speaking of "one-horned," that's what unicorn literally means. Borrowed into English past the early 1200s from French,unicorn comes from the Latin unicornis, "having one horn." This root joins uni-, meaning "i," andcornu, "horn." (The Latin is a loan translation of the Greek monokeros, its equivalent of "one horn" and passing into English every bit monoceros.)
While the wordunicorn isn't evidenced in English until the Middle Ages, descriptions of the unicorn—believed, in artifact, to be a existent animal—are far older. Ane of the earliest known accounts of a one-horned fauna comes in the 4th century bc from Ctesias, a Greek physician and historian who traveled in Persia. He wrote of a fast and formidable creature, about the size of a donkey, with a long, multicolored horn. It lived in India, where unicorn-like images have been institute on aboriginal seals.
This is too where the Roman historian Pliny the Elder located an brute with "the head of the stag, the feet of the elephant, and the tail of the boar, while the rest of the body is like that of the equus caballus … has a single blackness horn, which projects from the centre of its forehead, 2 cubits in length." That's about iii anxiety long.
Ctesias and Pliny'due south unicorns don't audio like unicorns equally we imagine them today. They audio like oxen, antelope, or rhinoceroses (that animate being'due south proper noun is literally "nose horned" in Greek). And indeed, the unicorn of antiquity was likely 1 of these animals (or some conflation of them). In addition, the unicorn, equally it is mentioned in the Former Testament of the Bible, likely refers to a wild ox or rhino, called reem in its original Hebrew.
And so how did the unicorn become the national brute of Scotland?
Past the 1200s, whenunicorn entered the English, myths about the unicorn every bit a fantastical fauna were condign well-established.
During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, art portrayed the unicorn as the familiar white horse with a single horn—and legend had it that the elusive just fierce beast, whose horn could purify h2o, could only be tamed by a virgin.
Onto these myths were mapped Christian stories and imagery about the Passion of Jesus Christ and the Declaration of the Virgin Mary besides pop ideas of knightly and ladylike love, contributing to the unicorn every bit symbol of chastity and purity. These associations lent the unicorn to heraldry (armorial bearings) also—surviving today in the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom, which joined a king of beasts (England) and a unicorn (Scotland) in representation of their union.
The unicorn, here, draws on the before use of two unicorns in Scotland's regal coat of arms, in turn influenced past former gold coins, also known asunicornsbecause why not. They were first issued in the country in 1488.
This symbolism and history of the unicorn helped ensconce it as the national fauna of Scotland today, variously representing strength, valor, innocence, and pride.
Side note: In the 1500–1700s, unicorns also meant medicine and romance. "Unicorn horns"—sometimes called alicorns, which were, in reality, elephant or narwhal tusks—were made into cups and powders believed to exist powerful antidotes or aphrodisiacs.
When did it become all "unicorns and rainbows"?
In the 1800s, Victorians paired unicorns with rainbows, romanticizing them as majestic fantasies that still loom in the imagination of children today—as seen over a century after in the fascination with unicorns in 1980s cultural products similar the testify and merchandise ofMy Piddling Pony. And, who needs Shakespeare and C.Southward. Lewis, whose works featured unicorns, when you have 1982's The Terminal Unicorn, an adapted anime film seared into the memory of every kid of the '80s?
The 1980s is besides when LGBTQ motility became more prominent, raising with its rainbow flag the unicorn as a symbol of pride in parades and protests. For this symbol, the LGBTQ community draws not only on the unicorn'southward connections to rainbows, but besides on its historical associations with the powerful and the possible, the mystical and the magical, the fantastical and the fabulous.
Some other meaning, admitting a niggling more risqué and lesser known, sees some currency in the LGBTQ community and in polyamorous circles. Every bit evidenced in the 2010s, thisunicorn is slang for, usually, a bisexual woman who sleeps with an existing couple composed of a heterosexual male and bisexual adult female without the expectation of emotional intimacy. The term implies that such a person is rare—like the unicorn in myth.
From myth to metaphor
Others take seized on the unicorn's reputation for rarity in the 2010s.
For instance, in 2013 in the world of finance, venture capitalist Aileen Lee called new companies valued at over i billion dollarsunicorns. BuzzFeed and Spotify are some familiar unicorns. While nosotros recently added this sense of unicorn to our lexicon, other companies are worth and so much that they've generated some wordplay we're keeping an heart on: Uber and Snapchat have been calleddecacorns, valued at over $10 billion (deca- meaning "ten") while other tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have earned hectocorn status, valued at over $100 billion (hecto-, "hundred").
Unicorns are no stranger to technology either, as the Unicorn Face emoji, 🦄, shows. This rainbow-colored character was officially approved by Unicode in 2015, coinciding with an explosion in nostalgia for the 1980s and 1990s—and later reflected in the airy pinks, purples, and blues of Starbucks's Unicorn Frappucino or the colorful, glittery trends in fashion and beauty, often described as unicorn.
Getting unicorn hair or nails is ane way to stand out, to be one-of-kind, to exist prized like a unicorn, which takes off in the 2010s every bit a more general term for "something special, cherished, or perfect." As we have divers it: "a person or thing that is rare and highly valued, or is a hypothetical ideal." We might call a girl, BFF, partner—anyone who showers sunshine and rainbows and lollipops into our lives—our unicorns.
Or, used with a more cheeky tone, someone hoping for a solution that quickly dispatches an intractable problem, equally if by magic, may be said to exist property out for a unicorn solution.
Unicorns aren't real, merely the give-and-takeunicorn is far from fiction in our civilisation. Through language, we've transformed the myth of the unicorn into a singular and colorful metaphor for all those treasured—or fantasized—rarities that so oft elude u.s.a.. It's just one of those rare, fantastical words.
The real globe is chock with the fantastic likewise. Simply consider the unicorn of the sea, the narwhal. Where did the narwhal get its name?
Source: https://www.dictionary.com/e/unicorn-word-trends/
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