Random Harry Potter Spell

What this list is

These are the incantations from a series of books that taught a generation of children a few words of Latin without any of them noticing. That is not an accident, and it is not decoration. The author studied classics, and she built her magic out of a real dead language on purpose, for reasons that are genuinely clever.

Press Generate and it hands you one. A few from the list:

• Accio
• Lumos
• Expecto Patronum
• Wingardium Leviosa
• Expelliarmus
• Petrificus Totalus
• Sectumsempra
• Avada Kedavra

Most of those are Latin, or something built to look like Latin. One of them, the last, is deliberately not, and the difference between it and all the others is one of the most quietly deliberate choices in the whole series. This page is about how these words were made.

Drawing a spell

1. Press Generate for one spell.
2. Ask for a few to build a duelling set or a lesson.
3. Type into Contains to search the incantations.
4. Copy to keep them.

Where these come from

The incantations from the series, gathered and checked by hand. The tool picks from that pool in your browser.

Why the magic is in a dead language

The author has explained her thinking, and it is worth following, because it is a real insight into how to make invented magic feel old.

She chose Latin because it is a dead language, and a dead language carries a particular weight. Latin is the language of ancient Rome, of the medieval church, of centuries of scholarship, law and medicine. It is no longer anyone's native tongue, which means it belongs to the past, to books, to institutions older than anyone alive. When you hear Latin, some part of you registers antiquity, authority, and secret knowledge, because those are the contexts in which most people have ever encountered it. It sounds like something written in an old, forbidden book, which is exactly what a book of spells is supposed to be.

This is the whole trick, and it is a good one. A spell in plain English would sound silly: shouting "float upward" at a feather has no power to it. A spell in a wholly invented language would sound like nonsense, arbitrary syllables with no resonance. But a spell in Latin sounds ancient and serious, because Latin genuinely is ancient and has genuinely been the language of hidden and powerful knowledge for two thousand years. The author borrowed all of that accumulated weight for free, simply by reaching for the language that already carried it.

There is a lovely side effect. Because the incantations are built from real Latin roots, and Latin is the ancestor of French, Spanish, Italian and a great deal of English vocabulary, a reader who knows any of those languages, or who simply has a large English vocabulary, keeps half-recognising the words. That flicker of recognition, the sense that you almost understand the magic, makes it feel real in a way pure invention never could.

Each spell is a small puzzle

The author has said she intended the spells to be a puzzle for the reader, and this is where the craft becomes a game you can play.

Because the incantations are built from real roots, you can often work out what a spell does before the book tells you, if you know a little Latin or can spot the English words hiding inside. This turns reading into a small, continual act of decoding, a reward quietly available to anyone who looks.

Work through a few and you will see it. The spell that produces light contains the root that gives us words like luminous and illuminate. The spell that puts it out contains the root for night, the same one buried in nocturnal. The disarming spell that knocks a wand from an enemy's hand is built from roots meaning to drive away and weapon, the same pieces that make expel and arms. The spell that freezes a body solid combines pieces meaning rock and total. Once you notice the pattern, you cannot stop noticing it, and every new spell becomes a little riddle whose answer is hidden in its own sound.

This is genuinely elegant writing, because it works on two levels at once. A child who knows no Latin simply learns that a particular word does a particular thing, and enjoys the sound of it. A reader who can see the roots gets a second, private layer of pleasure, the satisfaction of understanding the machinery. The same words serve both, and neither reader is aware of what the other is getting. That is a difficult thing to do, and the author does it across an entire invented vocabulary.

The ones she simply made up

Not every spell is real Latin, and the author is refreshingly honest about this. Some are what is sometimes called cod Latin or dog Latin: words built to sound Latin, with the right endings and rhythm, but assembled loosely rather than translated properly. They are Latin-flavoured rather than Latin.

The most famous example is the levitation spell every reader remembers from the first book, the one a character struggles to pronounce. It is a whimsical mixture: an English word you can hear plainly at the front, joined to Latin-ish pieces suggesting height and lightness. It is not a proper Latin phrase at all. It is a playful invention that merely wears Latin's clothes, and it is deliberately more memorable and more fun to say than a strict translation would have been, which suits a spell first taught to eleven-year-olds.

This is the author being practical rather than purist. A story is not a Latin exam, and a spell's first job is to sound right and stick in the memory. So where real Latin served, she used it, and where a looser, funnier, more sayable invention worked better, she made one up and let it pass for Latin. She has cheerfully described taking liberties, twisting things around, and making them her own. The magic system is not a scholarly reconstruction. It is a writer using a real language as raw material and bending it wherever the story is better served by the bend.

That mixture, real roots where they work and invented ones where they do not, is exactly why the spells feel both authentic and alive. Pure Latin would be stiff. Pure invention would be weightless. The blend gives you the weight of the real and the freedom of the made-up, at the same time.

The one spell that breaks the rule

Now the detail that makes all of this more than trivia, because it shows the author using her own system to say something.

The most terrible spell in the series, the killing curse, is not Latin. The author has been explicit about this. It comes instead from a different and older source: an Aramaic phrase, an ancient Middle Eastern expression meaning roughly let the thing be destroyed. And she has pointed out that it is the origin of a word every child already knows, the classic magic word of stage magicians, which descends from that same ancient phrase.

Sit with how deliberate that is. The entire magical vocabulary of the series is European, built on Latin, the familiar language of Western scholarship and church. And then, for the one truly unforgivable spell, the one that simply ends a life with no counter and no defence, the author reaches outside that whole system, to a language older and stranger and more distant, one most of her readers cannot place at all. The killing curse does not sound like the other spells, and that is the point. It is set deliberately apart, marked as something more ancient and more alien than the ordinary magic taught in school, by giving it a linguistic root that belongs to none of the same family.

There is even a buried horror in the sound of it. The phrase carries an echo of the ordinary word for a dead body, so that the very syllables of the killing curse whisper what the curse produces. A reader need not know any of this consciously to feel it. The word simply sounds wrong, older and colder than the friendly Latin around it, and that wrongness is manufactured, chosen, placed there on purpose.

This is the whole argument of the page in one example. The spells are not random noises. They are built from real languages, chosen for the weight those languages carry, and the single most important exception, the one death-dealing curse, is set apart by breaking the very rule all the others follow. That is not decoration. That is an author using language itself as a storytelling tool, so precisely that the darkest thing in the books is marked as dark before you even learn what it does.

Questions people ask

Are the spells real Latin?

Many are built from genuine Latin roots, though not always as strict, grammatical Latin phrases. Others are looser inventions designed to sound Latin without translating properly. The author used real Latin where it worked and made up Latin-flavoured words where a more memorable invention served the story better.

Can you really guess what a spell does from its name?

Often, yes, if you know a little Latin or can spot the English words hidden in the roots. The author intended exactly this, treating the spells as a puzzle, so that light spells contain the root for light, night spells the root for night, and so on. It rewards anyone who looks closely.

Why is the killing curse different from the others?

Because it is deliberately not Latin. The author drew it from an ancient Aramaic phrase meaning let the thing be destroyed, setting the series' darkest spell apart from the European, Latin-based magic taught in school. The different linguistic root marks it as older, stranger and more dangerous than ordinary magic.

Why choose Latin at all?

Because it is a dead language, and dead languages carry an air of antiquity, authority and secret knowledge, having been the tongue of ancient Rome, the church and centuries of scholarship. Latin makes a spell sound old and powerful for free, which plain English or pure invention never could.

References

1. Harry Potter Lexicon, on the author's stated reasons for using Latin, the spell-as-puzzle intent, and the Aramaic origin of the killing curse. https://potterlex.com/latin
2. Today Translations, quoting the author at the Edinburgh Book Festival on the Aramaic origin of the killing curse and on taking liberties with language. https://www.todaytranslations.com/news/ten-harry-potter-spells-translated-into-english/