Deplorable Word word itself, and had vowed that none of them, nor their descendants, would seek to discover it. Jadis said she had "learned it in a secret place and paid a terrible price to learn it". The book does not say what that price was, or give further details on the Deplorable Word. Lewis does not explicitly link the Deplorable Word to any specific weapon of mass destruction, but he alludes to the power of humanity to destroy life. Writing in 1955 in the midst of the Cold War, Lewis has the lion Aslan say to the central characters from the
Tiger versus lion 20th Century, lions and tigers had also occurred in other Asian or Eurasian nations, including Iran. As such, there is a word for 'Lion', which can also mean 'Tiger', and is used in Iran, South Asia and other areas, that is 'Sher' or 'Shir' (), and its significance is discussed below. The lion is also of cultural importance in the Far East, including the land of the Indochinese tiger, but according to authors such as Reginald Innes Pocock (1939) and Nowell and Jackson (1996), the lion did not naturally occur there. According to Colin Tudge (2011), given that both cats