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solipsist comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, July 2014, chapter 102 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (370)
That doesn't make any sense. If Harry didn't think he knew the word in English, he wouldn't start 'It is called...' and then break off as the Parseltongue word comes to mind and he doesn't have to lapse back into English. He would say something like 'I'm not sure what exactly the ritual is called -'
Yes, elaborate theories based on Harry doing what he said he would do in chapter 86:
Hardly a stretch that he encountered a few hints in books and went 'oh, the dark ritual which confers immortality and something bad Moody thinks Voldemort made while he was alive are the same thing', even if he'd never read about Koschei the Deathless or D&D's liches.
There are few ways the word Horcrux could come out of Harry's mouth that I would not take as evidence for Harry doing outside research. It would take non-trivial circumlocutions to indicate that Harry doesn't know what the English word Horcrux means. Such circumlocutions appear in the text. The best reason I can think of for those circumlocutions to appear in the text is to prevent people like me from inferring too much from Harry's vocabulary choice. There are alternatives explanations, like hinting that Salazar invented Horcruxes, but they seem less likely to me.
And what circumlocutions are those, exactly? Because in the passage quoted, I see a straightforward explanation of the ritual and a naming in English (with the unexpected result that he knew the English word's equivalent in Parseltongue too).
I hope you are right.