J.K. Rowling Explains the History Behind Choran-… That Thing the Occamy Is

It’s the word that confused absolutely everyone, both in the final version of the film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and in the accompanying screenplay: choranaptyxic. In Rowling’s world, it’s a word that means something that can grow or shrink to fill the available space, such as the Occamy. There’s still some confusion on how to say it: Cor-an-AP-tikist? Cuh-RAN-up-tixic? Cor-a-WHAT?

Luckily for us, in a new clip from the bonus features in the upcoming Fantastic Beasts digital and Blu-ray release, Rowling explains how she came up with the concept, and Eddie Redmayne says the word itself for us a little slower (though it seems that he might be the only one who can – even Alison Sudol struggles to remember the word!)

Rowling explains that the idea came from a popular myth that fish only grow to fit the space available to them. Unfortunately, after some research, she found “to [her] horror” that this is not true. So without a word already in use to explain such a phenomenon, Rowling invented her own, which, as Redmayne pronounces it, is “cuh-ran-app-TIC-sic” (or somewhere thereabouts; maybe Rowling will give us a “Hermione teaching Krum how to say her name” moment for this word too?).

This featurette clip also features some gorgeous concept art of the Occamy, including one where Newt is riding the beast as it flies across a cloud-covered sky. You can see the whole clip, courtesy of Entertainment Weekly, here:

The new clip is just a taste of what we hope is to come in bonus features for the home video release of the film! What secrets are you hoping will be revealed on the home release of the film? Let us know in the comments!