Wizard

A wizard is a practitioner of magic, especially in folklore, fantasy fiction, and fantasy role-playing games. In popular use during 16th century England, "wizard' was used to denote a helpful male folk magican, a cunning man as they were usually called. The word does not generally apply to Neopagans, or to stage magicians (properly termed illusionists) like David Copperfield, Paul Daniels, or James Randi.

Related terms

In most cases there is little to differentiate a wizard from similar fictional and folkloric practitioners of magic such as an enchanter, a magician, a sorcerer, a necromancer, or a thaumaturgist, but specific authors and works use the names with narrower meanings. When such distinctions are made, sorcerers are more often practitioners of evocations or black magic, and there may be variations on level and type of power associated with each name.

Related Topics:
Enchanter - Magician - Sorcerer - Necromancer - Thaumaturgist - Evocation - Black magic

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The ever-shifting chaos of fantasy writing has, of course, muddled the meaning of each term, but they should never be stuck with a single meaning, for they change depending upon where they're found.

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Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition, for example, distinguishes between the sorcerer and wizard character classes as follows:

Related Topics:
Dungeons & Dragons - Character class

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• "Sorcerers create magic the way poets create poems, with inborn talent honed by practice."
• "Wizards depend on intensive study to create their magic... For a wizard, magic is not a talent but a deliberate rewarding art."

Steve Pemberton's The Times & Life of Lucifer Jones describes the distinction thusly: "The difference between a wizard and a sorcerer is comparable to that between, say, a lion and a tiger, but wizards are acutely status-conscious, and to them, it's more like the difference between a lion and a dead kitten."

Related Topics:
Steve Pemberton - The Times & Life of Lucifer Jones

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