39,327
edits
Future Slang: Difference between revisions
m
Mass update links
m (removed Category:We Will Not Use an Index In The Future; added Category:We Will Use An Index In The Future using HotCat) |
m (Mass update links) |
||
Line 3:
'''Holly''' (ship's computer): "What's a 'trace' "?<br />
'''Rimmer''': "It's space jargon. It means 'find him'."<br />
'''Holly''': "[[Subverted Trope|No, it doesn't. You just made it up to sound cool.]]"|''[[
Slang has changed over time, and undoubtedly will change more in the future. Therefore, in the interests of verisimilitude or just to sound interesting, writers who write stories set in [[The Future]] will include their idea of Future Slang as an attempt to (mildly) avert [[Eternal English]]. Often these will be drop-in replacements for current phrases, unless they are subject to [[Bilingual Bonus]].
Line 33:
* ''[[Legion of Super-Heroes|Legion of Superheroes]]'', when Jim Shooter is writing it. Oh florg, someone zeezee Cos, he'll translate this zizz.
** Bart Allen (Impulse) and other future denizens of [[The DCU|the DC universe]] throw around the word "grife", usually as a replacement for family-friendly expletives like "crap." "Oh, grife." Possibly an Interlac word, but Bart has great difficulty replacing it with any acceptable English equivalent.
** Jim Shooter also did this when he [[Valiant Comics|wrote]] [[Magnus, Robot Fighter]] and [[Warriors Of Plasm]].
** "Zeezee" in particular is quite clever, since it's specifically ''[[DC Universe]]'' future slang (it means to contact via communicator, and is a reference to [[Superman|Jimmy Olsen's signal watch]]).
** [[Lampshade Hanging]] in ''Legion of Super-Heroes Secret Files and Origins'', where a magazine interview with the Legion's financier, R.J. Brande, commented on his frequent use of "By damn". Brande said he was an old fashioned guy and didn't hold with obscenities like "grife".
Line 39:
* ''[[Lobo]]'': Lobo is prone to calling people "Fraggin' Bastiches," though the reference to actual swearing is decidedly obvious.
* ''[[Marvel Universe|Marvel 2099]]'' tends to use "shock" as its all-purpose swear word.
** [[Spider
* Used frequently in ''[[
* Brian Azzarello's ''[[Spaceman]]'' showcases a near-unreadable shorthand speak inspired by chatrooms and textmessages. "I brain i get it, lol lol lol" indeed.
Line 52:
* ''[[The Fifth Element]]'' has the word 'green' and variations of it being used as a generic positive like awesome. Too bad it caught on as an over used buzz word for environmentalism, which is way less cool. In the scene where the authorities are sweeping Corbin's building, one unfortunate chap flips off the cops and yells "Smoke you!". It does not end well for him.
* ''[[Gattaca]]'' used this primarily as ways to deride people born through natural conception -- "godchild", "faithbirth" and so on.
* Like its TV counterpart, ''[[
* ''[[Zenon]]: Girl of the 21st Century'': Cetus lapetus, guys! The movie is totally lunar! An entire song whose lyrics include nothing but future slang (i.e. a bunch of unrelated scientific terms all jammed together).
** Interestingly, the boys on the "space stay" actually don't like Microbe because their lyrics ''make sense''. Apparently, "interplanetary megastellar hydrostatic" makes perfect sense to them.
Line 64:
* The book ''The Bar Code Tattoo'' takes place in a future where people have barcodes tattooed on their bodies and their dialogue peppered with the phrase "final level!" to describe anything remotely awesome.
* Lampshaded in ''[[Perry Rhodan]]'', most of the main cast being immortal sometime use old terran slang that surprise regular human of said era. The opposite happen also, ''[[Crowning Moment of Awesome]]'' when a Starship commander use "By Rhodan!" when Rhodan himself is not far.
* ''[[A Clockwork Orange (
* In David Mitchell's ''[[Cloud Atlas]]'', of which parts take place in the future, all words that begin with ex- (like expert) are written without an e (like xpert), and most objects are [[Stuck
* ''[[Ender's Game]]'': The students at the battle school developed their own slang, though most of it doesn't apparently extend beyond its walls.
** In the ''Shadows'' series, it's remarked upon by one of the characters that battle school slang is slowly moving into common use. Some also appeared in ''Empire'', this being handwaved away by the extensive Arabic education the characters had received.
** Supposedly OSC pulled an Anthony Burgess for ''Shadows'': he created the Battle School slang via the transliteration of existing, modern-day slang phrases from cultures all over the world. There used to be a page on his website [[Shown Their Work|explaining all the etymology]].
** Got it archived [http://web.archive.org/web/20000901071301/www.philoticweb.net/compendium/culbschool.html here]
* ''[[The
** That hoopy frood Ford Prefect sure knew where his towel was at!
** The franchise sometimes used the swear word "zark" as a replacement for "fuck", as in: "Zarking photons! That hoopy frood sure knows where his towel is!" It is likely this is a corruption of "Zarquon", a famous religious figure {{spoiler|who appears briefly at the End of the Universe.}}
Line 92:
* The ''[[Star Wars Expanded Universe|Star Wars]]'' expanded Universe uses a kriff-load of this karking shavit.
** Technically the ''Star Wars'' stuff would be Past Slang as its all a long time ago.... Anyway, X-wing pilots have plenty of slang for all manner of fighters. TIE fighters are Eyeballs, Interceptors are Squints, Bombers are Dupes, and so on and so forth.
** In addition, ''Star Wars'' has actually taken Future Slang from other series: "[[Spider Robinson|kark]]," "[[Farscape
* Inverted in Tamora Pierce's [[Tortall Universe|Beka Cooper]] books, where there is all manner of entertaining 'past slang', like 'sarden', 'bardash', 'scummer' and 'gixie'.
** This becomes excessively awkward when you use these terms in real life accidently and everyone just sort of goes 'huh?'
Line 105:
* As mentioned in the entry on Golden Age Science-Fiction, ''[[Foundation]]'' used curses that were primarily space-based. One character in particular was fond of venting his spleen by shouting "ga-LAX-y!" Later in the series, curses and oaths appeared based on the religion of science created by Salvor Hardin after the first Seldon Crisis.
* In ''[[Bumped]]'' by Megan [[Mc Cafferty]], which takes place in 2036, all of the slang relates to pregnancy or reproduction. In this society, everyone over 18 is infertile, so teens are paid top dollar to be surrogate parents for rich older couples.
* The favorite exclamation in [[
* In ''[[Storm Thief]],'' the main character says "Frek" or "frekking" to describe something annoying -- much like the other word it much resembles.
* In [[
** Also inverted with the downtime destinations. The language barrier doesn't exist in London or Denver, right? Wrong; after more than a century, the language and slang are wildly different. [[Show, Don't Tell|Or show we're told.]]
* The futuristic slang word "kruk" was introduced in the Doctor Who spin-off novels produced by Virgin after the BBC complained of the use of "fuck" in some of the earlier novels. Strangely enough, some people preferred the word, probably due to the presence of another [[George Carlin|aggressive k]].
Line 122:
** In ''The Sontaran Experiment'', the human spacemen use a 'future English' that sounds vaguely South African, with words like 'yunnerstan?'.
*** If that's supposed to be [[Don't Explain the Joke|"Do you understand?"]] then it also sounds vaguely Australian too, given our habit of mushing together words.
* ''[[
** Actually, that last one isn't slang--an "arn" is a measurement of time, roughly analogous to an hour.
* ''[[Firefly]]'' had a mishmash of Mandarin (or the actors' best stab at Mandarin) and cowboy slang for its future-folks. ''Dong ma?'' The Chinese swearing resulted in characters calling each other "motherfucker" [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|in perfect safety from the censors]]. Or sometimes more colourful terms like "explosive diarrhoea of an elephant".
Line 134:
(Everyone stares blankly at him)<br />
Sam Tyler: "Smack?heroin?bloody heroin!" }}
* And who could forget ''[[
** Only gimboids would think that, goit!
** Now, now, there's no need to be a gwenlyn about it. The modo might just have not seen the early seasons.
* In the ''[[Star Trek:
* An episode of the original ''[[The Outer Limits]]'' titled "Soldier" had a far-future soldier appear in 1960s time. A language professor is brought in to translate the soldier's gibberish, only for the professor to point out the soldier is speaking English, just faster and with some futuristic slang. When the soldier is decamped to live at the professor's house, we later see the professor's son learning the slang easily (as children pick up on slang usage more quickly than adults).
** The episode was written by [[Harlan Ellison]], who has a thing about street slang.
Line 155:
== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[
* When ''[[Deadlands]]'' left behind the "Weird Western" motif for [[After the End|more]] [[Space Western|futuristic]] incarnations, the slang changed, as well. "Brainer," short for "no-brainer" is either "dumbass" or "dumbass without [[Psychic Powers]]", depending on who you ask. "Grape" is a [[Fantastic Racism|derisive word]] for the natives of ''Lost Colony'', the [[Proud Warrior Race Guy|anouks]] who have been at war with the invading humans off and on for a few decades. "Wine" is, well, the red stuff you get when you squish a grape...
* In an interesting past-slang example, the Planescape setting for ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' (And the [[Planescape: Torment]] PC game) had Planar Cant, largely derived from old English thieves' jargon and Cockney rhyming slang. There's a whole sodding dictionary of it [http://mimir.net/cant/cant2.html here.]
* ''[[GURPS]] [[Transhuman Space]]'' occasionally dabbles in this, sometimes to the extent that some people ''in the 22nd century'' aren't entirely certain what the slang words mean. From [http://mail.sjgames.com/pipermail/teralogosnews/2003/000024.html Teralogos News]:
{{quote| '"I'm burnt and cored, and I want to tox the downlift or elf who dooped our song," said Lords of the Belt lead singer, Parallax Verge, apparently expressing anger over the theft of the piece.'}}
* In the 3rd edition of White Wolf game ''[[
** All the main White Wolf sourcebooks included this, including the New WoD ones.
* Hoi, chummer, that fraggin' ''[[Shadowrun]]'' game employs a drek-load of this. Also employed in other languages, where various regional slangs are implied to exist: "Ruhrdeutsch" (Ruhr valley German) is a bizarre mix of current Westphalian German, Future Slang English and Japanese.
Line 186:
== Video Games ==
* ''[[
* Gothic Fantasy example: ''[[Dungeons and Dragons|D&D]]: Planescape'' (and the game ''[[Planescape: Torment]]'') uses a lot of baroque slang, like "knight of the post" for "thief", "rattle yer bone-box" for "talk" and so on. This is, mostly, based on early 19th-century British slang (some of it more or less context-uprooted Cockney rhyming slang), making it historical rather than futuristic.
** There's a whole dictionary of it [http://mimir.net/cant/cant2.html here].
** A few of the slang terms are still used in Australia (unsurprising, since Aussies get their slang from the same source).
Line 196:
* ''[[Morrowind]]'' has this a bit. Example: 'You N'wah!'. Fetcher, or S'wit. It's actually very clever on Bethesda's part, as only the natives to Morrowind swear like that. Outlanders generally don't. Even in ''[[Oblivion]]'', it's possible to tell which Dark Elf NPC's are originally from there, as they're the only ones to swear at people like that.
* ''[[Aquanox]]'': "Light" is a commonly-used greeting in the series, probably due to the fact that it's really dark at the bottom of the ocean.
* Parodied in the ''[[The Adventures of Sam
* Actually an [[Alternate History]] slang, [[Mission Control|Zofia]] in ''[[Command and Conquer Red Alert]] 2'' once drops "Sweet [[Josef Stalin|Stalin]]!"
Line 207:
** [[Word of God]] is that Zillion was a [[Take That]] aimed at ''[[Firefly]]''.
* ''[[Terror Island]]'' uses a "tensed logic", meaning that whenever something happening in the future is discussed, the characters talk in [http://www.terrorisland.net/strips/094.html slang] based almost entirely off of disjointed computer terms. They also alliterate in flashbacks -- which is supposed to be a kind of [[Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe]].
* In ''[[
Line 216:
== Western Animation ==
* In ''[[
{{quote| "Mathematical! Rhombus!"}}
* ''[[Batman Beyond]]'' used this trope, and it was schway. (Or schwarbage, depending on the viewer.) "Schway" may be derived from the Mandarin word ''shuài'', meaning "handsome", "graceful", "smart" and generally cool; it's used this way in ''[[Firefly]]''. Alternatively, it may come from chouette (pronounced "schwett"), a French word of similar meaning.
** Also, "Twip". Its use is kind of broad (Terry's little brother, superheroes said brother doesn't like, the class nerd, etc.) so it's probably synonymous with "wimp" (weak/pathetic person) or something of the like, rather than "twerp" (small, annoying person) as one might first assume.
* ''Beast Wars'': has the word ''slag''.
* ''[[Magic:
*** Slag is also a real British slang word for loose woman (synonymous with slut).
*** Slag was originally used to refer to the "partially vitreous by-product of smelting ore to purify metals."
Line 236:
* In one of the many futures shown on ''[[The Simpsons]]'', "Smell you later" has replaced "Goodbye" in common usage--to the extent that "Smell you later forever" makes sense.
* Parodied on ''[[South Park]]'' in the "Go God Go" two-parter; in the future, religion has been phased out of human society, leading to turns-of-phrase like "Sciencedammit!" and "Science H Logic!".
* It's a plot point in ''[[Young Justice (
{{reflist}}
| |||