The Devil and Bill Ellis

The word “grammar,” Mr. Ellis writes, had an old vernacular usage, meaning “the ability to do magic.” That overtone survives in “grimoire,” the term for a book of spells, as well as the word “glamour,” which was originally “an illusion of beauty created through black magic.”

A sorcerer, then, is a kind of scholar, and vice versa. —Scott McLemee
The Devil and Bill Ellis (Chronicle)

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