Jus

High Valyrian

Pronunciation

(Classical) IPA^(key): /ɟus/

Verb

jus

1. third-person singular/collective aorist active subjunctive of jagon

Trigedasleng

Etymology

From English juice.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /dʒus/

Rhymes: -us

Noun

jus

1. blood

Derived Terms

• branjus
• jusdreina
• jusdreinen
• jusklampa
• sheidjus

 

Creation and Usage Notes

I created this for the phrase jus drein jus daun, because Jason Rothenberg wanted something interesting for "blood must have blood". It was going to be hard to simply use the Trigedasleng reflex of "blood" for the word "blood" because it would sound nearly identical. The other issue was the "must have" part. It needed to be short, and there was no way I was going to be able to translate "must have" without using at least four syllables. I had to have some sort of idiom that meant "blood must have blood" without actually literally translating as "blood must have blood". For whatever reason I thought of vampires, and it mixed with the mysterious Obama quote from that one dude's dream "violence for violence is the rule of beasts", and I thought, "Blood drinks blood". I liked it because the result was going to be four syllables, same as "blood must have blood", and it had a nice [dʒ]-[d]-[dʒ]-[d] pattern—plus it would sound cool to end with daun. It was the type of thing that could be chanted. For those wondering whether blood can actually drink anything, the idea was to drink something is to require it—the way we drink and require water. The verb usage is entirely metaphorical. After this phrase was coined, Jason wanted to use "blood" in several other contexts (e.g. Nightblood, Heda of Blood, etc.), and so I supplied options using jus, but he rejected all of them. It was clear that while it worked for jus drein jus daun, he didn't like the word on its own. This may have been where the Trigedasleng tradition of retaining old words in compounds only began. Thus we have natblida, Blodreina, etc. (Though we do have sheidjus!) I'm really grateful the fans took to the phrase. There were a lot of lexical choices I made with this language that were risky. It was such a relief when the language got a warm reception. It's been a wonderful six years, and a lot of it has to do with the fans of the language. -David J. Peterson 00:40, 30 September 2020 (PDT)