Platemail

From the QA draft notes,

This is a bit nitpicky I suppose; I don't know if there was some internal discussion about this, but even though "platemail" is a common term in RPGs, scholars generally considered a misnomer, since the word "mail" refers to an interlinked mesh. They talk about "plate armor" instead.

See a discussion of this here --> Demystifying Chain Mail and Ring Mail

Originally, mail just referred to chain-mail, although a 19th century scholar suggested all sorts of alternative mail constructions, some of which are not to believed to have ever existed, though there is evidence for some like banded-mail. This is where the current terminology of "chain-mail" developed from.

Anyway, I thought it was worth bringing up ! Even if nitpicky and you guys decide to go with RPG conventions !

 

+1 nornally its "plate" armor or "chain nail/ring nail"

 

@liz_the_wiz,

You mean "mail", not "nail"!

I've also thought that maybe when the term platemail was coined maybe the idea is that plate is usually worn with chainmail underneath. But it isn't always... Not really sure why the term was coined, whether it just sounded good to the person or what.

There's also dispute over the accuracy of "ringmail" if you read the link.

 

Heh was reading a bit. This complaint about the term platemail goes back to the 19th century. Though I saw an encyclopedia entry of the time use the term, too.

<--- EDIT: After looking at more sources, it looks like "scale-mail" was also sometimes doubly referred to as "plate-mail" and this appears where some confusion came from.