Early Hick Common Phrases and Maxims

This page collects short Early Hick expressions that are useful as phrases, ritual sayings, or examples of compact style. For the full grammar, see Early Hick.

Sacred and Ethical Maxims

Truth and the Righteous Path

thides thrallas, thralwades barak'er
truth-ABS sacred.light-ILL, righteous.path-ABS walk.VERB
"Truth enters sacred light; one walks the righteous path."

Idiomatic sense:

To have truth revealed, one walks the righteous path.

This maxim preserves transparent thrallas, from thral-las “sacred light-ILL.” The first clause is compact and proverbial rather than an ordinary finite verbal clause. The second clause gives the habitual action or discipline through which the revelation is understood to occur.

Later ritual usage hears thrallas as the fused lexical noun thralas “divine revelation, sacred illumination.” In this reading, the maxim itself helps fossilize the phrase into a sacred term.

The balance between thrallas and thralwades depends on the sacred-light sense of thral: truth does not simply get found, but enters sacred illumination through right walking.

A Scavenger’s Words

imtirokul matakalel ka'irurlislas'er 'alrumul pirul grapales!
scavenger words cave-dweller-state.VERB ear within earthworm-ABS
"A scavenger's words are worms in your ear."

Idiomatic sense:

Opportunistic lies lodge themselves in the listener’s mind.

This maxim uses imtirok “scavenger” metaphorically for an opportunist or con-artist. The image is not that cave dwellers are inherently corrupt, but that the words take on a constructed ka’irurlislas “cave-dweller state”: they settle into a hidden inner place and remain there.

The form ka’irurlislas’er is poetic and proverbial. It was likely coined for the maxim rather than inherited as an ordinary everyday verb, though repeated quotation may later lexicalize it. The final grapales preserves the Maltreks or upper Malter Valley regional plural of grapal, beside standard grapares from grapar “earthworm.”