Wix

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Synonyms:
See also:	Witch
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Wix is a gender-neutral word for witch/wizard, when 'witch' and 'wizard' are used as gendered words for the same thing, as in Harry Potter. (Compare fandoms in which 'witch' and 'wizard' refer to practitioners of two entirely different kinds of magic, such as Discworld or the Enchanted Forest Chronicles.)

The adjective wixen is used by Harry Potter fans in place of 'wizarding', as in 'the wixen world' in place of 'the wizarding world.'

Wix, wixen and wixes have variously been used as the plural. As we are crowdsourcing new vocabulary for an existing (and highly irregular) language, this is not terribly surprising.

History

Wix originated in Harry Potter fandom, perhaps in this post by cannibalhands on 11 October 2013:

Because the witch/wizard dichotomy of the magical world didn’t fit them, nonbinary students started coming up with non-gendered terms. Genderfluid Luna decided she liked “wix” the best because it resembled “mix” while keeping the wi of witch and wizard, and now the Quibbler refers to the magical community exclusively as “the wixen world.”

Themonsterblogofmonsters explains use as they know it in April 2014 (emphasis added):

Anonymous asked: what is a wix?

themonsterblogofmonsters replied:

“Wix” is the gender-neutral term for a witch, wizard, or otherwise identifying magical (or non-muggle) individual. The term was first invented over at magicqueers [1] who are awesome and post lgbtqia+ headcanons for the Potterverse.

For people who like those kinds of headcanons there is also hiddenhogwarts [2] for POC, neuroatypical and lgbtqia+ headcanons and I strongly recommend both blogs if you want to hear more about how the magical world may interact with people who aren’t cisgender heterosexuals.

The term wix was invented as a headcanon by someone who suggested it was invented by Luna Lovegood who kept the wi- part of wizard and witch and added x so it sounded like mix. The other proposed gender-neutral term was “mage” but I personally felt that had too many masculine connotations to be truly gender-neutral and so use the word “wix” on an almost day-to-day basis when discussing Potterverse headcanons with friends and family.

For further reference, Wix can be used to say “The Wixen world” to reference the magical world, and used as the term “wixes” in the plural, to refer to groups of magical individuals rather than saying “witches and wizards” which suggests that the “normal” state of things is for people to be cisgender. [...] It’s a gender-neutral term that can be used for any group of people, but was invented firstly so that genderfluid or non-binary identifying individuals can have a term to refer to like-wise identifying magical characters. And I think that’s beautiful.

It is worth noting that some blogs such as amortentiafashion [3] use wix as the singular and plural, and other blogs still may use wixen as a plural. As such when going to different blogs check for context and if necessary ask which format they are using, as the word is new and is, as such, still being figured out.

Urban Dictionary has this definition:

wixen n. pl.

Magical people. Wixen is a gender neutral alternative to witches or wizards. It can be used as a descriptor as well, i.e. the wixen world. Its singular form is wix.

Ex.

That wix is really good at transfiguration magic, they once turned a hairbrush into a porcupine.

There's some wixen over in that corner. They can't pass as muggles at all.

In the author's notes on a story published in 2017, OnceABlueMoon says:

Wix is a gender neutral term for both witches and wizards that I invented, but it goes a little bit deeper than that. In the Harry Potter universe, they mostly seem to use "wizard" as an equivalent for the gender neutral form of "man" (as in mankind). However, I used the Witch trials in my explanation. Historically seen, witch was a gender neutral term too, not only meaning women in possession of magic, but also men. This situation gave me two technically gendered, but also technically gender neutral terms. Instead of choosing one and thereby constantly irking myself because it would either not fit the HP universe or dismiss the historically correct term, I chose to use an entirely new, truly gender neutral term.

Response and alternatives

Some users of Reddit in /r/HPfanfiction consider the term funny because in German, "Wixen" is a homophone of the word "wichsen", which means "to jack off", "to wank", etc. Some consider it a terrible-sounding artificial word, comparable to Mx. and Latinx. Others have proposed alternatives, including "wizen" ( which is associated with Wizengamot), "mage", and "magical". However, some users do like and use the term.

[ShredofInsanity]
This. I remember the start of it. I thought it would die out quickly, but sadly it has become more prevalent. We already had the gender-neutral "magical" and so had no need for this... Abomination. "Wix" sounds like the sort of heavily advertised magical fairy doll for small children that always aggressively sold worse than Barbie.