Scroll origins

Unidentified scrolls can have any one of many labels. In Hack 1.0, these labels are initially paired with the scroll types in a way that seems to be meaningful. It is often claimed that Hack 1.0 uses a fixed label for each scroll type, but in fact it does shuffle the labels.

Meanings

The various labels through NetHack 3.6.0, and their meanings, are:

ANDOVA BEGARIN 

Unknown meaning. In Hack, this scroll is initially used for the scroll of fire. Possibly "End Of A Beginning"

DAIYEN FOOELS 

"Dying fools". Originally scroll of enchant weapon.

DUAM XNAHT 

"Thanx Maud" spelled backwards. Originally scroll of amnesia.

ELAM EBOW 

Unknown meaning. Originally scroll of magic mapping. When looked at backwards, it sounds close to "woe be male"; this could be a reference to the stereotype that men do not like to ask for directions.

ELBIB YLOH 

"Holy Bible" spelled backwards. Originally scroll of genocide.

FOOBIE BLETCH

Unknown meaning; possibly related to hacker jargon 'foobar', 'bletch'. In Hack 1.0, this is initially a spare label.

GARVEN DEH

Unknown meaning; possibly a Star Wars reference to Garven Dreis. In Hack 1.0, this is initially a spare label.

HACKEM MUCHE 

"Hack 'em much". Originally scroll of damage weapon; the scroll of charging now occupies this slot.

JUYED AWK YACC 

Tenuous reference to Unix tools ed(1), awk(1), yacc(1). Originally scroll of destroy armor.

KERNOD WEL 

"Kenned well" in Scots. Originally scroll of identify.

KIRJE 

Finnish for "a letter" (as in a letter sent by mail). The scroll of mail was added in Hack 1.0.2, and the choice of initial label suggests that the labels are indeed meaningful.

LEP GEX VEN ZEA 

Unknown meaning. Originally scroll of create monster, and "LEP GEX" is the rather monstrous leopard gecko.

NR 9 

Possible reference to The Beatles' confusing Revolution No. 9. Originally scroll of confuse monster.

PRATYAVAYAH 

"Reverse annoyance" in Sanskrit. Originally scroll of remove curse.

PRIRUTSENIE 

"Taming" in Russian, a transliteration of приручение. The romanization is slightly irregular: the character "ч", transcribed as "TS", is conventionally rendered in "CH". Originally scroll of taming.

READ ME 

"Read me". Originally scroll of blank paper. A README is a rudimentary form of end-user documentation. May also be a reference to Alice in Wonderland, where Alice finds small cakes labeled "EAT ME" and small bottles labeled "DRINK ME".

TEMOV 

Unknown meaning. Possibly "Vomit" backwards and misspelled. Also, Temov is a common Eastern European surname. In Hack 1.0, this is initially a spare label.

THARR 

"There's gold in them thar hills!". Originally scroll of gold detection.

VE FORBRYDERNE 

"Woe to the criminals!" in Danish. Originally scroll of punishment.

VELOX NEB 

Unknown meaning (but velox is Latin for "fast", maybe "fast any be"?). In Hack 1.0, this is initially a spare label.

VENZAR BORGAVVE 

Unknown meaning. Originally scroll of teleportation.

VERR YED HORRE 

Unknown meaning; maybe referencing "or" - light in Hebrew? Originally scroll of light.

XIXAXA XOXAXA XUXAXA 

Spanish (archaic spelling) for "mwahahahaha", a stereotypical evil laugh. Originally scroll of scare monster.

YUM YUM 

"Yum yum!" Originally scroll of food detection.

ZELGO MER 

Unknown meaning. Originally scroll of enchant armor.

Some variants add extra scroll names, to accommodate additional scrolls. NetHack 3.6.0 adds no new scrolls, but does add some new names that originally appeared in one or more variants:

ETAOIN SHRDLU 

The most common letters in English, in order. The first two columns of a Linotype keyboard, used in print media in 1886 until the 1980s, are ETAOIN and SHRDLU. A mistyping was typically corrected by running fingers down these two columns, typing "ETAOIN SHRDLU", a phrase that signals the next operator to remove the erroneous line.

LOREM IPSUM 

Latin-derived filler text.

FNORD 

Nonsense word central to the Principia Discordia, made popular by the Illuminatus! trilogy.

KO BATE 

Line from Kurd Lasswitz's book Auf zwei Planeten.

ABRA KA DABRA 

Traditional incantation, as engraved on amulets and as stereotypically used by stage magicians.

ASHPD SODALG 

From Portal: ASHPD is the acronym for a portal gun; SODALG is GLaDOS spelled backwards.

ZLORFIK 

Alien swearword from the computer game Zak McKracken.

GNIK SISI VLE 

"Elvis is King" spelled backwards. Used as words of power in Zak McKracken.

HAPAX LEGOMENON 

"A thing said once," that is, a word or phrase occurring once in a written corpus.

EIRIS SAZUN IDISI

PHOL ENDE WODAN 

First lines of the two Merseburg incantations.

GHOTI 

A phonological respelling of "fish".

MAPIRO MAHAMA DIROMAT 

Incantation featured a scene in the computer game Wizardry.

VAS CORP BET MANI 

One variant of the Armageddon spell in the Ultima game series; translated as "Great death, small healing."

XOR OTA 

"Atorox" spelled backwards. Atorox is a robot from the works of Aarne Haapakoski.

STRC PRST SKRZ KRK 

"Stick your finger through your throat". Czech and Slovak tongue-twister.

Because there are many more scroll labels than types of scrolls, not all of these are used each game.

Variants

A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:

"Add scroll origins from more variants"

Some variants add more scrolls and scroll labels.

SpliceHack

The following scroll labels were added in SpliceHack

4OFAE OF9 SCC9 

A reference to the Voynich manuscript.

TEMP USF UGIT 

The Latin phrase "tempus fugit", often translated in English as "time flies". Initially scroll of time.

POTESTAS 

A Latin word meaning "power".

TRATS ARL 

"LRA START" spelled backwards. It may be a reference to the LRA START YouTube channel.

TLON UQBAR 

A reference to Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.

TOYL ENT RUBLE 

"Toil and trouble", from the first line of the witches' song in MacBeth.

NYEHEHE 

A laughing noise.

ELPHE MONATER

ABAJ

CONGLATURATION 

A mistranslation from the 1984 Ghostbusters game.

DESUM TETRAL

NHIRL 

An abbreviation of "NetHack In Real Life".

PEBCAK RTFM 

Two slang abbreviations common in IT and engineering, PEBCAK and RTFM.

Further reading

• Scroll name definitions in objects.c
• Annotated NetHack File