Werevixens and Wereknights

...and should it be Werevixen and Werevixens for the plurals.

Anyway, I have just now created two fantasy characters/concepts...Werevixen and Wereknight, can I copyright them or is anything drawing on the tradition of Werewolfsdom already copyrighted by big film companies?

Bytheway, is 'Werebeast' too overkill. Anyway, I also present to the world by up and comming books and films... 'were' and 'werebeast'

Wereloonies

You usually can't copyright normal words or combinations thereof. And as "were-" is a prefix that is commonly put in front of the word for any type of shapechanging critter (hypothetically, of course), no one is likely to grant you a patent for "werevixen". No one ever patented weretiger or werebear or werepanther, after all.

You can, however, trademark words. It would take a lot of lawyer fees, however.

As for the actual word, "wer" is Old English for male/man (in Old English, "man" actually referred to humans of either sex), and "vixen" means "female fox". So what would a "werevixen" be? A transexual human/fox hybrid? Given that knights are generally male, "wereknight" would be somewhat redundant.

'Man' actually still referrs to humans of either sex, as in 'mankind'. So nothing strange there.

"Man" sometimes retains its OE meaning of "person", but for the most part its meaning has shifted to "male". When I said that "wer" meant "man", I meant in the modern meaning of "man". "wer" referred specifically to males.

Yes, but it doesn't anymore.

If our present Deputy Leader of the British Labour Party and so called Leader of the UK Parliamentary House of Commons - the much vaunted and much derided Harriet Harman, the Honourable Member for the Peckham and Camberwell constituency of South London - has her way the word "MAN" would be deleted from the British version of the English Language altogether.

That word "man, and its plural form "men", rarely passes the lips of this lady if she can help it and she goes out of her way to find suitable , non gender defined, alternatives whenever she stands up before the despatch box to address the House, and this of course makes her appear more batty and loopy than ever.

For example, whenever any of those poor deceased servicemen killed in the Afghanistan conflict are paraded in a funeral cortege down the main street of the now famous small town of Wooton Bassett, in Wiltshire, she invariably refers to them as "British service personnel" whereas everybody else refers to them as "servicemen". Maybe someboidy oughht to remind this lady that personnel contains the word "son".

Even worse, her own name contains the word "man" which is a source of a great deal of amusement and "ammunition" to be aimed at Harriet HarMAN. She is universally known in the UK as Harriet Harperson, simply because of her extree adherence to Political Correctness, and even more extreme measures in the pursuance of misandrist policies.

But even Harperson is unfortunate isn't it? Look at its last three letters....now Harriet surely doesn't approve of that!

Yesterday the "lovely" Harriet was fined £350 for careless driving - she was trying to park and pranged another vehicle (don't many women do exacty the same thing? Well, if she is allowed to be blatantly sexist then so can I) and now has six points on her licence, this being her third motoring offence in three years, a supposed paragon of political virtuosity. To make matters worse she was also found guilty of using her mobile phone while driving, even though she, herself, was instrumental in the making this a criminal offence in the UK a few years ago. Obviously Harperson believes in the sayings "Do as I say but not as I do" and "One rule for you lot out there and one rule for me!"

Anybody else but Harperson would have had the book thrown at them for doing what she did with her mobile at the wheel, and when she was apprehended by the driver of the vehicle she collided with when parking all she would say before she drove off in a haughty manner:

"I'm Harriet Harman - you know where to find me!"

And off she sallied forth down the street, dented bumpers and all.......