"I Know That Thing!"

[LostLight]

so during my Organic Chemistry class today in the university, we learned about what are the rules for giving names to molecules- when the professor said "and to this subject we call as Nomenclature". While the rest of my class was trying to understand the subject, the only thing I was thinking about was "I'm going to learn Nomenclature? Oh by the Judges, I am going to be a Shaniatu!"

That made me think how many of you had a similar experience- that is, learning something from WoD before you knew what it was in real life, so if you have some interesting story to share- this is the time and the place!

[Michael]

When I was a student, one of the set texts had an article in it on medieval Hermeticism, but I didn't actually read that particular article until last year. It included the word 'supernal' and the whole outline was strangely familiar.

[Dreaminggod]

Aww, I think you might have just stunted your chances at Awakening.

[Charlaquin]

I was pretty surprised when I realized Vicissitude was a real English word.

[ArcaneArts]

I was pretty surprised to find out a lot of words from WoD were real words.

I was raised on DnD, leave me alone.

[Yossarian]

My favourites are:

The real definition of ventru

The fact that "gangrel" is a real English word.

[Ben Quo]

World of Darkness and Exalted kept me way ahead of the vocabulary curve for a long time.

[BigDamnHero]

Mythology in general I was surprised a lot by what I discovered was real, though not because of WoD (frex: barghests, the jabberwock, bandersnatches)

For WoD specifically there's not a lot I didn't already know since I started on it so recently. Chiminage I didn't realize was an English word until that blog post about updating werewolf vocabulary in 2E.

The Seelie/Unseelie Court dichotomy I didn't know until after I played Ars Magica, does that count?

EDIT: Oh! Verney/Adam being an erudite monster in Frankentstein. I was only familiar with the movie version (and even then, it was more Young Frankenstein than Boris Karloff).

[Malkydel]

Not an nWoD revelation, but I got into researching Modern Primitivism (and an accompanying interesting in body modification) thanks to Clanbook Tzimisce.

[amechra]

I was pretty surprised to find out a lot of words from WoD were real words.

I was raised on DnD, leave me alone.

No excuse! (Then again, I was raised on 1e D&D, and was reading stuff like The Worm Ouroboros by middle school, so...)

[Heu]

Seeing someone use the word "auspex" as part of the username for a Skyrim character (Imperial legionnaire) they were roleplaying on livejournal. I did a bit of a double-take before tossing my character into the thread, wondering if he'd turn out to be a vampire.