Guild Wars 2

The phrase shouted by Asura when set on fire, “I’ve been immolated!”, is simply misused and historically and etimologically inaccurate! In ancient Rome, the “Mola Salsa”, from which the term immolation (being sprinkled with mola salsa) comes from, was a mixture of salt, flour and emmer that was sprinkled on the head of the sacrificial victims before the sacrifice took place. The sacrifice itself was usually a blood ritual, in which the victims throat was slit to let the blood flow to the ground (where the underground gods could take their share of the sacrificial banquet), followed by the burning of the more “noble” parts of the animal (fat and interior parts, which make a good amount of smoke and smell) and the cooking and eating, by the participants to the ritual, of the lesser animal parts, like muscles and all other things people can usually buy in a supermarket.
Therefore, as you can see, immolation is very far from the burning of anything.

And, on a side note, this is probably the only thing I don’t like about Asura!

As indicated here: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immolation), while you are technically correct, and that the word is probably more appropriately associated with the concepts of sacrifice, the term has come to mean to “destroy by fire” and has come to be associated with fire (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/immolate). I could go on about how language changes meaning over time or what not, but I’d rather not. It’s an interesting TIL, but really, the term is used appropriately enough in this context given its modern day associations.

The origin of words is less important than their current cultural use.

e.g.: Witch comes from a latin word meaning wise woman. When we talk about a witch we refer to an evil, kitten of the devil who eats children and lives in gingerbread houses while dancing naked in the night of a new moon casting spells from a bubbling cauldron full of chickens teeth and eye of newt.

Exactly.

One common example, Decimate. There’s the literal historic meaning (execution of roman army soldiers by drawing lots, the 1 out of the 10th soldier was executed by the other 9; literally “removal of a tenth”) Then there’s the basic English adopted meaning of causing great destruction/damage; reduce greatly in number.

So no problem here.

“I’ve been ignited!” Doesn’t sound right either, despite being correct. Bodies are not easy to burn as they are comprised mostly from water.

“Ive been set ablaze!” sounds really silly.

Bodies may be watery but they are also fatty, there’s plenty to burn, water doesn’t inherently stop burns :p You can heat water up just like anything else. Remember the fire triangle kids :p

Emikochan, I jokingly challenge you to light yourself on fire and then recording the results. You’ll likely find its quite a bit harder then you suggest. You are not incorrect, but the amount of temperature needed is much higher then a conventional flame. Heating something to the point of burning or boiling is one thing, but to actually catch a body on fire takes quite a bit more exposure.

It is recorded you need a temperature in excess of 1.6k F or 871 C. That temperature is not easy to come by.

Not everyone is a fatty either. =P

I say that if those fires burn a kitten iron blocks also known as golems, they´re hot enough to burn living tissues.

Am I the only one who had a bigger problem with an Asura misusing “quantum leap” than with this type of thing?