The Origin of the Mancubus

My older brother broke down the word "mancubus" and made a couple stretches into finding Latinate origins for the base and suffix part of the word (we did this in a casual conversation a good 4 or more years ago). He basically assumed that "man" was referring to men, to humans and to the body itself. That the mancubus' body was pieced together from different body parts of corpses, dead demons and so on. Ever notice how piece-meal it looks? It makes sense...and watch how it dies -- it just falls apart, the dark magics that bind it leave with the slain demonic essence. Demons are said, in the bible, to be incapable of copulation for reproduction as we know it, which would explain the necessity for the demons to "create" new demons in this fashion. The latter part of the word, "-cubus" implies a reference to demonic nature (i.e. incubus) which resides within the flesh construct, a "demon internal" if you will. Kind of an interesting investigation into the possible origin of the mancubus.

Note that the terms succubus and incubus are derived from the notions of "lying under" or "lying on" respectively (thinking in terms of the missionary position). Exactly how that tallies with this interpretation is not clear. "man-" doesn't have any clear meaning in Latin, either as a prefix or a preposition.

Should I delete the other post?

Fredrik said:

Should I delete the other post?

Yeah, that'd be good.

EDIT: and then this one too

Nice findings. Did you happen to look into how body parts, hybrid organic constructs, and men in general might be referred to in Latin, though? That might clarify it a bit more. You have to look into other ways what you assume it is referring to might be stated. Heh. That was the worst english sentence EVAR.

man = homo, hominis, m. (IIRC)

Grazza said:

man = homo, hominis, m. (IIRC)

Well, I guess it's not all latinate. But even "man" by itself is enough to function in our guess of the meaning of the word.

I always thought it was the brainchild of the guys at id when they were making Doom2. ;)

Didn't I already post about this months ago on these forums? Maybe it was just IRC...

Relating the termination to incubus is natural. The fact that the specific definition of incubus might not fit perfectly isn't relevant; that it's the name of a demonic creature is enough.

The beginning of the word obviously comes from mancus, which means missing a hand, amputee or invalid in latin.

Occurrences of "mancus" in open forums.

homocubus heh

Grazza said:
Occurrences of "mancus" in open forums.

Ah, cool... well done, I guess last night I was sleepy or something that instead of searching for mancus I searched for mancubus, and it didn't help.

Grazza said:

Occurrences of "mancus" in open forums.

lol! I was still "insertwackynamehere#"!