Everyone these days knows about the Four Elements of Air, Earth, Fire, and Water; heck, you can’t play your average fantasy-themed video game without running into them, from Pokémon right on up. Those foolish medievals, thinking things were made up of only four elements.

It turns out that what we think of when we hear Air, Earth, Fire, and Water, is not at all what the medieval philosophers meant by those terms. They were technical terms, as were their primary qualities; Fire, for example, is Hot and Dry, and those terms don’t mean what you’d think, either.

If you’re at all curious what they really did mean by them, Brandon has got you covered.