the.com/genie
a cosmic loophole salesman who grants exactly what you say, never what you mean.
means A supernatural spirit, often summoned from a lamp or bottle, said to possess magical powers and grant wishes to whoever frees it.
from From the French 'génie,' which translators of the 'Arabian Nights' borrowed because it sounded conveniently like the Arabic 'jinn' (or 'djinn') — the original spirits of fire and air from pre-Islamic and Islamic lore. By happy coincidence, the French word already meant a guardian or guiding spirit, descending from the Latin 'genius,' the protective deity assigned to each person at birth. So 'genie' is a linguistic mash-up: a Latin spirit wearing an Arabic costume, fused by 18th-century European storytellers who couldn't resist the rhyme.
- origin
- From Arabic jinn, beings made of smokeless fire.
- free will
- Islamic tradition says jinn can be good or evil.
- lamp myth
- Bottle imprisonment was popularized by later Western retellings.
- third wish
- Folklore loves the rule against wishing for more wishes.
- solomon
- Legends say King Solomon commanded jinn to build temples.
aladdin's genie — robin williams voiced the shape-shifting character in disney's 1992 animated film aladdin