Matthew Hopkins, England’s most notorious witch hunter, rested his reputation on his experience in confronting the supernatural. To this end, he greatly exaggerated the intensity of his first encounter with an accused witch, Elizabeth Clarke. In Hopkins’ account, Clarke mentioned a familiar named Grizzel Greedigut. But earlier publications show that this did not happen, and that Hopkins appropriated the name from the dubious confession of another woman, Joan Wallis. Today, we have largely accepted Grizzel Greedigut as a bizarre, nonsensical name, but it would not have been all that absurd at the time. Grizzle often described grey animals, and Grissel was a fairly popular name, an abbreviation of Grisilde. Greedigut meant ‘glutton,’ and was the name English colonials used for the American anglerfish. Without knowing more about the name’s historical context, we fall for Hopkins’ cynical ploy to maximize the strangeness of his encounter.

英国最臭名昭著的女巫猎人马修·霍普金斯（Matthew Hopkins）的声誉源于他对付超自然现象的经验。为此，他大大夸大了与被指控的女巫伊丽莎白·克拉克的第一次接触的强度。在霍普金斯的叙述中，克拉克提到了一个熟悉的名字叫格里兹尔·格里迪古特（Grizzel Greedigut）。但是较早的出版物表明，这种情况并没有发生，霍普金斯从另一个妇女琼·沃利斯的可疑供词中挪用了这个名字。今天，我们在很大程度上已经将Grizzel Greedigut视为一个怪诞的，荒谬的名字，但是在当时并没有那么荒谬。灰熊经常描述灰色动物，而格里瑟尔（Grissel）是一个相当受欢迎的名字，是格里希尔德（Grisilde）的缩写。Greedigut的意思是“ glut嘴”，是美国垂钓者使用的英国殖民地名称。在不了解该名称的历史背景的情况下，我们爱上了霍普金斯的愤世嫉俗的策略，以最大程度地了解他的遭遇。