Sorcel

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A male deer, especially a fallow deer, in its third year, when its antlers are beginning to develop into the broader form of a full adult
2. The term for a young buck in its third year of life, a stage between the spiked yearling and the fully mature stag
3. A fallow buck of about three years old, used in older hunting language to describe a deer at that particular age

Etymology: "Sorcel" is a variant spelling of "ensorcell," a verb meaning to bewitch or put a spell on someone. The word arrived in English from Old French "ensorceler," meaning to cast a spell or to captivate, which was a variant of "ensorcerer." That French verb was built from the prefix "en-," meaning "caused" to become, plus "sorcier," meaning sorcerer. The sorcerer at its heart traces back to Latin "sors," meaning fate, lot, or oracular response. The idea was that a sorcerer dealt in fate and in the answers that came from drawing lots or consulting prophecy. Behind that Latin lies an older root, reconstructed as "ser-," meaning "to bind," which hints at the notion of fate as something that binds people. The English record of the verb appears in the Oxford English Dictionary with a date of 1891, though the spelling "sorcel" is the more compressed form that readers are likely to meet in older or variant texts.