academicism

en-noun

academicism (countable and uncountable, plural academicisms)

(art, literature) Traditional or orthodox formalism; conventionalism.


homeworld

But Woman's heart within itself lives more, / And in her Homeworld she can happy be, / Loving and lov'd: from Nature's founts her Lore / Instinctive flows, she drinks it fresh and free

1839, Henry Ellison, Madmoments, page 229:

"First the Patrons wipe-out our home world, now you blow any chance of us making any credits," Kane said in his gruff sinking voice.

2016, A.K. Brown, Jumpstart (Champagne Universe Series: Book 1), page 19:

(science fiction) The world on which someone or something originated; a home planet or moon.


bug-eyed monster

bug-eyed monster (plural bug-eyed monsters)

(science fiction, derogatory) An extraterrestrial.


deep sleep

deep sleep (countable and uncountable, plural deep sleeps)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-deep sleep.wav

Donnchadh and Gwalcmai, along with the other fourteen teams selected for planetary infiltration, had been put into deep sleep shortly after liftoff from their planet.

2004, Robert Doherty, Area 51: Legend, →ISBN:

The Kironian had remained in deep sleep until alerted by a high-pitched squeaky sound. When the Kironian woke, everything seemed as though it had just left Kiron.

2005, Bob Ticer, Visiting the Strange Planet Called Earth, →ISBN, page 13:

There is also the possibility that our aliens perfected cryogenics and simply went into deep sleep until the environment improved.

2008, Cavin Wright, The Golden Prize, →ISBN, page 17:

(rare, fiction) Artificially induced hibernation in humans for the purpose of long distance space travel.


spacer

It was the futile throwing back in the face of the Spacers their most keenly felt insult: their insistence on considering the natives of Earth as disgustingly diseased.

"How do I know I can trust you?" asked BKR.
Grakker hesitated. "Spacer's oath," he said at last.

2014 [1993], Bruce Coville, Aliens Ate My Homework, page 134:

Shepard: What are you running for?
Charles Saracino: I'm seeking one of the five spacer seats in Parliament. They have certain baroque conditions for a citizen to be able to vote for them.
Charles Saracino: You have to spend more than six months a year in space. But you can't have stayed in any one settled system for more than a month.

2008, BioWare, Mass Effect (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Citadel:

He was thankful that he still had his suit on when the ship had a catastrophic decompression, a spacer's worst nightmare.

2017, A.K. Brown, Humans on the Menu (Champagne Universe Series: Book 2), page 20:

(science fiction) A person who works or lives in space.


teleport

(science fiction) Synonym of teleporter (“science fiction device”)


accessible

en-adj

accessible (comparative more accessible, superlative most accessible)

more accessible (comparative)
most accessible (superlative)

First attested in 1400, from French, from Late Latin accessibilis, from accessus, perfect passive participle of accēdō (“approach”), equivalent to access + -ible.

But something new was rippling through a million MySpace profiles. The sound was electro, and bass-laced synthetic dance pop would soon start streaming in from producers in Paris, dizzying the twenteens of Britain with its accessible, anthemic funk.

(art, literature) Easily understood or appreciated.


nonsense

en-noun

nonsense (usually uncountable, plural nonsenses)

From non- (“no, none, lack of”) + sense, from c. 1610. Compare the semantically similar West Frisian ûnsin (“nonsense”), Dutch onzin (“nonsense”), German Unsinn (“nonsense”), English unsense (“nonsense”).

Appendix:Roget MICRA thesaurus/Class IV § 497. Absurdity

Appendix:Roget MICRA thesaurus/Class IV § 517. Unmeaningness

(literature) A type of poetry that contains strange or surreal ideas, as, for example, that written by Edward Lear.


seme

Borrowed from Japanese 攻め (seme), derived from the verb 攻める (semeru, “to attack”).

[…] BL manga readers chose intelligence, protectiveness, and beauty/handsomeness as the top three most important traits in a seme […]

2008, Dru Pagliassotti, “Better Than Romance? Japanese BL Manga and the Subgenre of Male/Male Romantic Fiction”, in Antonia Levi, Mark McHarry, Dru Pagliassotti, editors, Boys' Love Manga: Essays on the Sexual Ambiguity and Cross-Cultural Fandom of the Genre, McFarland & Company (2008), →ISBN, page 73:

Sebas has always been the seme.

2010, Pentabu, My Girlfriend's a Geek, volume 1, Yen Press (2012), →ISBN:

The seme is larger, stronger, and more traditionally masculine, while the uke is smaller, weaker, and more feminine.

2011, Robin E. Brenner, Snow Wildsmith, “Love through a DIfferent Lens: Japanese Homoerotic Manga through the Eyes of American Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Other Sexualities Readers”, in Timothy Perper, Martha Cornog, editors, Mangatopia: Essays on Manga and Anime in the Modern World, Libraries Unlimited (2011), →ISBN, page 97:

(Japanese fiction, fandom slang) An active or dominant male character in a same-sex relationship; a top.


robot

desc

→ Arabic: رُوبُوت (rūbūt), رُوبُوط (rūbūṭ)

→ Hindi: रोबोट (roboṭ)

→ Japanese: ロボット (robotto)

→ Korean: 로봇 (robot)

→ Persian: رُبات (robât), روبات (rôbât)

→ Swahili: roboti

→ Welsh: robot

Internet Archive
Josef Čapek
Karel Čapek
R.U.R.

Borrowed from Czech robot, from robota (“drudgery, servitude”). Coined in the 1920 science-fiction play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) by Karel Čapek after having been suggested to him by his brother Josef, and taken into English without change.

Young Rossum invented a worker with a minimum amount of requirements. He had to simplify him. He rejected everything that did not contribute directly to the progress of work—everything that makes man more expensive. In fact, he rejected man and made the Robot. My dear Miss Glory, the Robots are not people. Mechanically they are more perfect than we are, they have an enormously developed intelligence, but they have no soul.

c. 1921 (date written), Karel Čapek, translated by Paul Selver, R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots): A Fantastic Melodrama […], Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1923, →OCLC, Act I, page 17:

The robots in Dick's novel, loosely adapted by Ridley Scott into the film Blade Runner, were so similar to humans that when they went rogue, trained bounty hunters were called in to perform psychological tests to see whether suspected androids lacked human empathy.

2010 January 26, Tom Chivers, Iain McDiarmid, The Telegraph:

(chiefly science fiction) An intelligent mechanical being designed to look like a human or other creature, and usually made from metal.


stock

en-noun

stock (countable and uncountable, plural stocks or (obsolete) stocken)

stocks (plural)
stocken (obsolete plural)

→ Dutch: stock

desctree

→ French: stock
→ Romanian: stoc
→ Turkish: stok

→ Italian: stock

→ Portuguese: estoque

→ Spanish: stock

From Middle English stok, from Old English stocc, from Proto-West Germanic *stokk, from Proto-Germanic *stukkaz (“tree-trunk”), with modern senses mostly referring either to the trunk from which the tree grows (figuratively, its origin and/or support/foundation), or to a piece of wood, stick, or rod. The senses of "supply" and "raw material" arose from a probable conflation with steck (“an item of goods, merchandise”) or the use of split tally sticks consisting of foil or counterfoil and stock to capture paid taxes, debts or exchanges. Doublet of chock.

stark (non-rhotic, father-bother merger)

(folklore) A piece of wood magically made to be just like a real baby and substituted for it by magical beings.


colon

From Latin cōlon (“a member of a verse of poem”), from Ancient Greek κῶλον (kôlon, “a member, limb, clause, part of a verse”).

uder

(palaeography) A clause or group of clauses written as a line, or taken as a standard of measure in ancient manuscripts or texts.


Bigfoot

August/September 1958, originally Big Foot, big + foot, relating to the large size of its supposed footprints relative to human footprints.

This imprint was made either Wednesday night or early Thursday morning by "Big Foot".

[1958 October 6, Andrew Genzoli, “Huge Foot Prints Hold Mystery Of Friendly Bluff Creek Giant”, in Humboldt Times, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2010-06-11:

Stories of “Bigfoot,” an eight-foot denizen of the forest in Northern California’s wild Trinity County, are among the main topics of conversation in that area. He is supposedly an Indian or half-breed who has reverted to an animal existence. A footprint believed to be his was measured by a Redding shoe store owner and found to be size 24!

1961 July 1, “Big deal”, in Boot and Shoe Recorder, volume 160, number 3, Philadelphia, Pa.: Chilton Company, →OCLC, The Last Word, page 68, column 3:

Some Earth people believe Bigfoot lives in underground caves; others believe Bigfoot is connected with extraterrestrials; still others believe Bigfoot is a spirit that can sometimes manifest in form.

1994, Sun Bear, Wabun Wind, Shawnodese, “A Dream Language of the Earth”, in Dreaming with the Wheel: How to Interpret and Work with your Dreams Using the Medicine Wheel, Fireside, →ISBN, page 145:

Then there are the sharp divisions of opinion about whether Bigfoot is a Gigantopithecus or a Neanderthal or some other hominid.

2016, Bryan Sykes, “The Guru”, in Bigfoot, Yeti, and the Last Neanderthal: A Geneticist’s Search for Modern Apemen, Disinformation Books, →ISBN, part II, page 173:

Many enthusiasts believe that Bigfoot is not some sort of undiscovered hominid, but rather a mystical being that moves between dimensions.

2019, Christopher D. Bader, Joseph O. Baker, “Bigfoot: Undiscovered Primate or Interdimensional Spirit?”, in Deviance Management: Insiders, Outsiders, Hiders, and Drifters, University of California Press, →ISBN, page 77:

(cryptozoology, folklore) A very large, hairy, humanoid creature, similar to the yeti, said to live in the wilderness areas of the United States and Canada, especially the Pacific Northwest.

بيغ فوت

unidentified yeti-like animal (individual creature)


Bigfoot

en-noun

Bigfoot (plural Bigfoot or Bigfeet or Bigfoots)

Bigfoot (plural)
Bigfeet (plural)
Bigfoots (plural)

My answer to those who believe that all Bigfoot are just huge cuddly Ewoks is to remind them that there is plenty of evidence that every member of the great apes family […] has exhibited hostility […].

2007, Matthew Scott Hansen, The Shadowkiller: A Novel, page 434:

The striking news on the appearance of a Bigfoot on Taibai Mountain in Xi'an, Shaanxi Provnice^([sic – meaning Province]) recently spread among local residents of Mei County located near the foot of Taibai Mountain. Is Taibai Mountain really home to a Bigfoot?
Who encountered the Bigfoot on Taibai Mountain?
Reporters interviewed many residents of Mei County, and their accounts varied.

2010 October 15, “Bigfoot sighted on Taibai Mountain”, in 叶欣, editor, People's Daily, archived from the original on 2015-05-23:

(cryptozoology, folklore) An individual creature of this type.


stylus

Borrowed from Latin stylus (“a stake or pale”). Probably not directly related to Ancient Greek στῦλος (stûlos, “a pillar”). Doublet of style.

иго́лка

граммофо́нная

(writing) An ancient writing implement consisting of a small rod with a pointed end for scratching letters on clay, wax-covered tablets or other surfaces, and a blunt end for obliterating them.

A small implement with a pointed end used for engraving and tracing.

(computing) A small device resembling a pen used to input handwritten text or drawings directly into an electronic device with a touch-sensitive screen.

ստիլուս

pen for writing on a touch-sensitive screen

[T]he pleasure of writing on wax with a stylus is exemplified by the fine, flowing hand of a Roman scribe who made out the birth certificate of Herennia Gemella, born March 128 AD.

2013 September 14, Jane Shilling, “The Golden Thread: the Story of Writing, by Ewan Clayton, review”, in The Telegraph:


morph

en-verb

morph (third-person singular simple present morphs, present participle morphing, simple past and past participle morphed)

morphs (present singular third-person)
morphing (participle present)
morphed (participle past)
morphed (past)

Meta leapt forward. In midair his lower half morphed, and suddenly he was one-half humanoid, one-half coiled spring.

"Would it reflect badly on women if I morphed my bust size up a bit for it? Sorta like wearing a padded bra?"

2015 January 30, Dan Shive, El Goonish Shive - EGS:NP (webcomic), Comic for Friday, Jan 30, 2015:

(science fiction, fantasy) To shapeshift.


accent

en-noun

accent (countable and uncountable, plural accents)

From Middle English accent, from Medieval Latin accentus and Old French accent, acent, both from Latin accentus, past participle of accinō (“sing to, sing along”). The word accent had been borrowed into Old English already, but was lost and reborrowed in Middle English.

tongval

distinctive pronunciation associated with a region, social group, etc.

акце́нт

math: mark to distinguish magnitudes of similar kind

pilkku

geometry: mark indicating minutes and seconds of a degree

The name Cézanne is written with an acute accent.

(orthography) A mark or character used in writing, in order to indicate the place of the spoken accent, or to indicate the nature or quality of the vowel marked.

(prosody, poetry) Stress laid on certain syllables of a verse.


bot

I stared at the bot and recognized her for the first time. She was me.

1998, David G. Hartwell, editor, Year's best SF 3, page 130:

As he guided the bot, Andrews reminisced about his younger days in Wyoming, when he had witnessed a mishandled load of wheat puff out a dusty fog.

The bot juddered to a halt, as the whole lower segment of its power arm darkened.

2007, Peter F. Hamilton, The Dreaming Void:

(science fiction, informal) A physical robot.


adjunct

/ˈæd͡ʒ.ʌŋkt/

From Latin adiunctus, perfect passive participle of adiungō (“join to”), from ad + iungō (“join”). Doublet of adjoint.

(palaeography) A graphic element that modifies another, such as (in Linear B script) a small syllabogram that is attached to a logogram as an abbreviation of an adjective that modifies that logogram (rather than as a phonetic complement that disambiguates the logogram).


parallel

From Middle French parallèle, borrowed from Latin parallelus.

parallel universe

(science fiction, of realities, dimensions, timelines, etc.) Coexisting but normally not interacting with the regular reality.


vowel

→ Yoruba: fáwẹ̀lì

From Middle English vouel, from Old French vouel, a variant of voyeul (whence French voyelle), from Latin vōcālis (“voiced”), itself a semantic loan of Koine Greek φωνῆεν (phōnêen). Doublet of vocal and vocalis.

Facetiously is spelled with all six vowels in alphabetical order.

(orthography) A letter representing the sound of a vowel; in English, the vowels are a, e, i, o, u, y.


action

action (countable and uncountable, plural actions)

→ Arabic: أَكْشِن (ʔakšin)

→ Bulgarian: екшън (ekšǎn)

→ German: Action

→ Irish: aicsean

→ Hebrew: אקשן (akshn)

→ Japanese: アクション (akushon)

→ Korean: 액션 (aeksyeon)

→ Russian: экшн (ekšn)

From Middle English accion, from Old French aucion, acciun, from Latin āctiō(n) (“act of doing or making”), from āctus + action suffix -iō(n), perfect passive participle of agere (“do, act”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂éǵeti; see also act, active. By surface analysis, act + -ion.

der

(literature) The event or connected series of events, either real or imaginary, forming the subject of a play, poem, or other composition; the unfolding of the drama of events.


hack

Abbreviation of hackney (“an ordinary horse”), probably from place name Hackney.

Dason is nothing but a two-bit hack.

He's nothing but the typical hack writer.

(derogatory, authorship) An untalented writer.


small

en-adj

small (comparative smaller, superlative smallest)

smaller (comparative)
smallest (superlative)

From Middle English smal, from Old English smæl (“small, narrow, slender”), from Proto-Germanic *smalaz (“small”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)mal-, *(s)mel- (“small, mean, malicious”). Cognate with Scots smal; sma (“small”); West Frisian smel (“narrow”); Dutch smal (“narrow”); German schmal (“narrow, small”); Danish, Norwegian, Swedish smal (“narrow; thin; slender”); Latin malus (“bad”); Russian ма́лый (mályj, “small”).

inh

better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness

"I've got catholic tastes. Catholic with a small "c", of course."

1959, Anthony Burgess, Beds in the East (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 584:

(writing, not comparable) Minuscule or lowercase, referring to written or printed letters.

փոքրատառ

minuscule or lowercase, referring to written letters


en-noun

NA (countable and uncountable, plural NAs)


FL

(slang, manga, anime) Abbreviation of female lead.


CT

(science fiction) Initialism of contraterrene.


ML

ML (countable and uncountable, plural MLs)

(slang, manga, anime) Abbreviation of male lead.


banshee

desc

→ Arabic: بَانْشِي (bānšī)

→ Arabic: بَانْشِي (bānšī)

→ Catalan: banshee

→ Dutch: banshee

→ Esperanto: banŝio

→ Finnish: banshee

→ French: banshee, banshie

→ German: Banshee

→ Japanese: バンシー (banshī)

→ Korean: 반시 (bansi)

→ Northern Kurdish: banşî

→ Portuguese: banshee

→ Russian: ба́нши (bánši), банши́ (banší), ба́ньши (bánʹši), баньши́ (banʹší)

→ Spanish: banshee

Borrowed from Irish bean sí, from Old Irish ben síde (literally “woman of the fairy mound”). The term banshee entered English in 1771.

der

Late had he heard, in prophet's dream, / The fatal Ben-Shie's boding scream […].

1810, The Lady of the Lake, Walter Scott, 3.VII:

(Scotland, Ireland, folklore) A female spirit, usually taking the form of a woman whose mournful wailing warns of an impending death.


IMF

Since 1996 and over six installments, special IMF (The Impossible Missions Force) agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has been spectacularly ‘figuring things right in the face of danger, often without a plan.

2018, Deborah Cornelious, “‘Mission: Impossible - Fallout’ review: mission successful”, in The Hindu, archived from the original on 2022-12-07:

Impossible Mission Force
w:Impossible Mission Force

(fiction) Initialism of Impossible Mission Force, a fictional spy organization from the Mission: Impossible franchise.


jump

Brill Publishers
hydraulic jump
jump cut
jump discontinuity
jump instruction

From Middle English jumpen (“to walk quickly, run, jump”), probably of Middle Low German or North Germanic origin, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *gumpōną ~ *gumbōną (“to hop, skip, jump”), an iterative verb. The OED suggests an imitative origin. Others have connected it to Ancient Greek ἀθεμβούσα (athemboúsa, “uninhibited”), which is unlikely. Related to jumble. In the sense “to propel oneself” it displaced leap partially and spring largely.
Cognates
Cognate with Middle Dutch gumpen (“to jump”), Low German jumpen (“to jump”), Middle High German gumpen, gampen (“to jump, hop”) (dialectal German gampen, Alemannic German gumpe, Walser dialect kumpu), Old Norse goppa (“to jump”) Danish gumpe (“to jolt”), Swedish gumpa (“to jump”), Danish gimpe (“to move up and down”), Middle English jumpren, jumbren (“to mix, jumble”).

onomatopoeic

imitative

قَفْزَة

instance of propelling oneself into the air — see also leap

(science fiction) An instance of faster-than-light travel, not observable from ordinary space.


slug

Nicoline van der Sijs
Slug (disambiguation)

Originally referred to a slow, lazy person, from Middle English slugge (“lazy person", also "slowth, slothfulness”), probably of either Old English or Old Norse origin; compare Norn slug (“lazy, slothful, sluggish”), dialectal Norwegian slugg (“a large, heavy body”), sluggje (“heavy, slow person”), Danish slog (“rascal, rogue”); perhaps ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *sliǵ-ōn, from *sley- (“smooth; slick; sticky; slimy”) or otherwise from the root of Old Norse slókr (“lazy person, oaf”), whence Icelandic slókur (“laziness”). Compare also Dutch slak (“snail, slug”). Doublet of slotch.


beat

→ Pennsylvania German: biede

From Middle English beten, from Old English bēatan (“to beat, pound, strike, lash, dash, thrust, hurt, injure”), from Proto-West Germanic *bautan, from Proto-Germanic *bautaną (“to push, strike”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰewd- (“to hit, strike”).
Compare Old Irish fo·botha (“he threatened”), Latin confutō (“I strike down”), fūstis (“stick, club”), Albanian bahe (“sling”), Lithuanian baudžiù, Old Armenian բութ (butʻ)).

der

march to the beat of a different drummer

(authorship) A short pause in a play, screenplay, or teleplay, for dramatic or comedic effect.


dimension

a machine that lets you travel to a parallel dimension.

"If a man should wish to be in some other place, it is entirely possible for him to imagine himself in that place and, diving back through the negative dimension, to emerge out of it in that place with instantaneous rapidity. To imagine oneself———"

1938 July, L. Ron Hubbard, “The Dangerous Dimension”, in Astounding Science-Fiction, volume XXI, number 5, Street & Smith, →OCLC, page 105:

DR. PAUL MANHEIM: I have been on the other side. I have touched another dimension. Part of me is still there.
LAURA MANHEIM: Help him.
DR. CRUSHER: Try to stay calm Dr. Manheim. I don't think it's going to help you're struggling against it.
DR. PAUL MANHEIM: My mind is floating between two places. It is difficult to know which is which. There is no way to explain it.

1988 May 2, Rod Loomis, Michelle Phillips, Gates McFadden, We'll Always Have Paris (Star Trek: The Next Generation), Paramount Domestic Television, →OCLC:

He was experimenting with matter transportation through the nth dimension.

2016, A.K. Brown, Jumpstart (Champagne Universe Series: Book 1), page 2:

(science fiction, fantasy) A universe or plane of existence.


voice

→ Russian: войс (vojs) (slang, from "voice message")

From Middle English voice, voys, vois, borrowed from Anglo-Norman voiz, voys, voice, Old French vois, voiz (Modern French voix), from Latin vōcem, accusative form of vōx (“voice”), from Proto-Indo-European *wṓkʷs, root noun from *wekʷ- (“to utter, speak”). Cognate with Sanskrit वाच् (vāc), Ancient Greek ὄψ (óps), Persian آواز (âvâz). Displaced native Middle English steven (“voice”) (from Old English stefn (see steven)), Old English hlēoþor, and Old English woþ. Broadly overtook Old English reord. Compare advocate, advowson, avouch, convoke, epic, vocal, vouch, vowel. Doublet of vox.

the voice of the people, the voice of God

(literature) A particular style or way of writing that expresses a certain tone or feeling.


force

en-noun

force (countable and uncountable, plural forces)

From Middle English force, fors, forse, from Old French force, from Late Latin fortia, a noun derived from the neuter plural of Latin fortis (“strong”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰerǵʰ- (“to rise, high, hill”).

der

non-rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger

The Europeans tried, my goodness how they tried. But on the day the US proved too strong and too inspired. They were, dammit, just better. And when Leonard's putt dropped they clearly had the force with them as well.

1999 September 28, Mike Selvey, “Crenshaw vindicated by a chain reaction”, in The Guardian:

The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.

2005, George Lucas, Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, spoken by Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), published 2005:

(humorous or science fiction, with the, often capitalized) A metaphysical and ubiquitous power from the fictional Star Wars universe created by George Lucas. See usage note.

voima

science fiction: binding, metaphysical, and ubiquitous power


contraction

en-noun

contraction (countable and uncountable, plural contractions)

PIE word
 *ḱóm
From Late Middle English contraccioun, contraxion (“spasm, contraction; constriction, shrinking; act of pressing together”), from Old French contraction (modern French contraction), from Latin contractiō(n) (“a drawing together, contraction; abridgement, shortening; dejection, despondency”), from contrahō (“to draw things together, assemble, collect, gather; to enter into a contract”) + -tiō(n) (suffix forming nouns relating to actions or their results). Contrahō is derived from con- (prefix denoting a bringing together of objects) + trahō (“to drag, pull”) (probably from Proto-Indo-European *dʰregʰ- (“to drag, pull; to run”)). By surface analysis, contract + -ion (suffix denoting actions or processes, or their results).

verkleining

Don’t is a contraction of do not; and ’til is a contraction of until.

Senses relating to pulling together or shortening.

A (sometimes reversible) contracting or reduction in length, scope, size, or volume; a narrowing, a shortening, a shrinking.

(orthography) In the English language: a shortened form of a word, often with omitted letters replaced by an apostrophe or a diacritical mark.


neck

The Neck no more upon the river sings.
And no Mermaid to bleach her linen flings
Upon the waves in the mild solar ray.

1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume I, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 234:

(folklore) A shapeshifting water spirit in Germanic mythology and folklore; a nix.


race

en-noun

race (countable and uncountable, plural races)

1560s, via Middle French race from Italian razza (early 14th century), of uncertain origin. Partially displaced native Middle English kinde (“kind, type, sort, race, nature”), whence English kind.
theories
* Diez and some other scholars suggest derivation from Proto-Germanic *raitō (whence Old High German reiza (“line”) and Old Norse ríta (“to score, log, outline”)), perhaps via Lombardic *raiza (“line”), which Körting notes is a literal rendering of Latin linea sanguinis (“bloodline of descent”). Anatoly Liberman says "the semantic fit is good" but the chronology falters; he says the Germanic word went out of use before the Italian word arose, and he says the intermediary is not attested.
* Some scholars suggest derivation from Old Spanish raza, rasa, from earlier ras, res (“head of cattle”), from Arabic رَأْس (raʔs, “head”), but Italian razza predates the Spanish word according to Diez and Meyer-Lübke.
* Meyer-Lübke suggested Latin generatio as the root; Körting says "the disappearance of two initial syllables hardly seems credible", but Meyer-Lübke notes the Venetian form narazza and the Old Bellunesian form naraccia, positing that after the first syllable ge- was lost, the remaining (una) narazza came to be reanalysed as una razza.
* Gianfranco Contini suggests the Italian word comes from Old French haraz (“troop of horses”), whence Modern French haras (“breeding farm for horses; stud farm”), from Old Norse hárr (“grey-haired; hoary”). Liberman considers this derivation the most likely.
* Other suggested Latin etyma:
** radius (perhaps via Vulgar Latin *radia) (per Baist).
** radix (“root”) (per Ulrich); Liberman says "the semantic match is excellent", and race (“rhizome of ginger”) (which definitely derives from radix) shows that the phonology is plausible.
** *raptiare (“breed falcons”) (per Körting).
** The nominative of ratio (perhaps via an unattested intermediate form *razzo), as opposed to ragione which derives from the accusative rationem.
* Other implausible suggestions include Slavic raz and Basque arraca, supposedly meaning "stud animal" (Basque arrazza, "race", derives from Spanish).

raça

a group of sentient beings distinguished by common characteristics

عِرْق

a large group of people distinguished from others on the basis of physical characteristics

raça

a group of organisms distinguished by common characteristics

A treaty was concluded between the race of elves and the race of men.

There are two distinct races of gods known to Norse mythology[.]

1898, Herman Isidore Stern, The gods of our fathers: a study of Saxon mythology, page 15:

Imagine a race of aliens that develops on a dimly lit world perpetually shrouded in clouds so that vision would be less useful for survival than on Earth.

1999, Clifford A. Pickover, The Science of Aliens, page 47:

Tali: My father is responsible for the lives of seventeen million people—our entire race is in his hands. And I'm his only child.

2008, BioWare, Mass Effect (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Normandy SR-1:

A group of sentient beings, particularly people, distinguished by common ancestry, heritage or characteristics (see Wikipedia's article on historical definitions of race):

(fantasy, science fiction, mythology) A large group of nonhumans distinguished from others on the basis of a common heritage.


tractor

en-verb

tractor (third-person singular simple present tractors, present participle tractoring, simple past and past participle tractored)

tractors (present singular third-person)
tractoring (participle present)
tractored (participle past)
tractored (past)

Formed from Latin tractus, perfect passive participle of trahere (“to pull”), + agent noun suffix -or.

(transitive, science fiction) To move with a tractor beam.


machine

→ Ainu: マシン

→ Bengali: মেশিন (meśin)

→ Cowlitz: məšín

→ Hindustani: मशीन (maśīn) / مشین (maśīn)

→ Irish: meaisín

→ Japanese: マシン (mashin)

→ Korean: 머신 (meosin)

→ Maori: mīhini

→ Punjabi

Gurmukhi script: ਮਸ਼ੀਨ (maśīn)

Shahmukhi script: مشین (maśīn)

→ Swahili: mashine

→ Tok Pisin: masin

Borrowed from Middle French machine, from Latin māchina (“a machine, engine, contrivance, device, stratagem, trick”), from Doric Greek μᾱχᾰνᾱ́ (mākhanā́), cognate with Attic Greek μηχᾰνή (mēkhanḗ, “a machine, engine, contrivance, device”), from which comes mechanical. Displaced native Old English searu.

cog

perpetual motion machine of the first kind

perpetual motion machine of the second kind

Outline of machines on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

I am apt to think, that the changing of the Trojan fleet into water-nymphs, which is the most violent machine in the whole Æneid[…]

1712 May 2 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison], “MONDAY, April 21, 1712”, in The Spectator, number 351; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a New Edition, […], volume IV, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton & Company, 1853, →OCLC:

(poetry) Supernatural agency in a poem, or a superhuman being introduced to perform some exploit.


tell

en-verb

tell (third-person singular simple present tells, present participle telling, simple past and past participle told or (dialectal or nonstandard) telled)

tells (present singular third-person)
telling (participle present)
told (participle past)
told (past)
telled (dialectal participle past)
telled (dialectal past)
tell (infinitive)

From Middle English tellen (“to count, tell”), from Old English tellan (“to count, tell”), from Proto-West Germanic *talljan, from Proto-Germanic *taljaną, *talzijaną (“to count, enumerate”), from Proto-Germanic *talą, *talǭ (“number, counting”), from Proto-Indo-European *dol- (“calculation, fraud”).
Cognate with Saterland Frisian tälle (“to say; tell”), West Frisian telle (“to count”), West Frisian fertelle (“to tell, narrate”), Dutch tellen (“to count”) and Dutch vertellen (“to tell”), Low German tellen (“to count”), German zählen, Faroese telja. More at tale.

cog

piss on someone's leg and tell them it's raining

Maria rewrote the section of her novel that talked about Meg and Sage's friendship to have less telling and more showing.

(authorship, intransitive) To reveal information in prose through outright expository statement -- contrasted with show


thunder

en-noun

thunder (countable and uncountable, plural thunders)

→ Alemannic German: Thönder

→ Japanese: サンダー (sandā)

→ Tagalog: tanders

→ Tok Pisin: tanda

From Middle English thunder, thonder, thundre, thonre, thunnere, þunre, from Old English þunor (“thunder”), from Proto-West Germanic *þunr, from Proto-Germanic *þunraz, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ten-, *(s)tenh₂- (“to thunder”).
Compare astound, astonish, stun. Germanic cognates include West Frisian tonger, Dutch donder, German Donner, Old Norse Þórr (English Thor), Danish torden, Norwegian Nynorsk tore. Other cognates include Persian تندر (tondar), Latin tonō, detonō, Ancient Greek στένω (sténō), στενάζω (stenázō), στόνος (stónos), Στέντωρ (Sténtōr), Irish torann, Welsh taran, Gaulish Taranis. Doublet of donner, Thunor, and Thor.

Adam's fall and Vico's thunder are embodied in a word of a hundred letters, the first of ten thunders in the Wake.

1996, William York Tindall, A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake, page 31:


broad

en-adj

broad (comparative broader, superlative broadest)

broader (comparative)
broadest (superlative)

thin

antonym(s) of “wide—regarding occupied space, width of an object”

skinny

antonym(s) of “wide—regarding body width”

Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *bʰer-der.?
Proto-Germanic *braidaz
Proto-West Germanic *braid
Old English brād
Middle English brood
English broad
From Middle English brood, brode, from Old English brād (“broad, flat, open, extended, spacious, wide, ample, copious”), from Proto-West Germanic *braid, from Proto-Germanic *braidaz (“broad”), of uncertain origin.
Cognate with Scots braid (“broad”), West Frisian breed (“broad”), Saterland Frisian breed (“broad”), Low German breed (“broad”), breet, Dutch breed (“broad”), German breit (“broad, wide”), Danish, Swedish and Norwegian Bokmål bred (“broad”), Norwegian brei (“broad”), Icelandic breiður (“broad, wide”).

inh

not be able to hit the broad side of a barn

Lee: I wrote that line for you. Maeve: A bit broad, if you ask me.

2018 April 22, “Journey into Night” (39:17 from the start), in Westworld, season 2, episode 1, spoken by Maeve Millay and Lee Sizemore (Thandie Newton and Simon Quarterman), via HBO:


dialogue

en-noun

dialogue (countable and uncountable, plural dialogues)

Inherited from Middle English dialog, from Old French dialoge (French dialogue), from Late Latin dialogus, from Ancient Greek διάλογος (diálogos, “conversation, discourse”), from διά (diá, “through, inter”) + λόγος (lógos, “speech, oration, discourse”), from διαλέγομαι (dialégomai, “to converse”), from διά (diá) + λέγειν (légein, “to speak”).

der

The movie had great special effects, but the dialogue was lackluster.

In 1936, Anstey had co-directed Housing Problems, which featured direct dialogue recording - allowing the subjects of the film to speak for themselves. As Anstey said: "At the time nobody had done it, and we gave slum dwellers a chance to make their own films."

2021 March 10, Greg Morse, “Telling the railway's story on film”, in RAIL, number 926, page 42:

(authorship) In a dramatic or literary presentation, the verbal parts of the script or text; the verbalizations of the actors or characters.

حِوَار

verbal part of a literary or dramatic work


human

From Late Middle English humayne, humain, from Middle French humain, from Old French humain, umain, from Latin hūmānus m (“of or belonging to a man, human, humane”, adjective), from homo, with unclear ū. Spelling human has been predominant since the early 18th century. Not etymologically related to man.

чолові́к m (čolovík) (now usually means "man", "male human")

Greetings. I am Blor-Utar from Zimtok-5. I have come to subjugate the human race. Do not resist. Why humans? Because, in addition to their value as slave labor, they are also delicious and nutritious!

1994 March 29, Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes:

(strictly, biology) The tallest, most abundant and most intelligent of the primates; Homo sapiens.

(fantasy, science fiction, mythology) A human as contrasted from superficially similar but typically more powerful humanoid creatures; a member of the human race.

Greetings, human! You have stumbled into the dimension of the Snow People.[…]Flesh plows clear the streets to make them safe to drive.[…]Does this shock you, human? Do the ways of our world open your eyes to the truths of your own?

2011 December 29, Alex Culang, Raynato Castro, Buttersafe (webcomic):

(fantasy, science fiction) A term of address for any human, often implying the listener's species is their only noteworthy trait.


bridge

From Middle English brigge, from Old English brycġ (“bridge”), from Proto-Germanic *brugjō, *brugjǭ (“bridge”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰerw-, *bʰrēw- (“wooden flooring, decking, bridge”).
Cognate with Scots brig, brigg, breeg (“bridge”), Saterland Frisian Brääch (“bridge”), West Frisian brêge (“bridge”), Dutch brug (“bridge”), German Brücke (“bridge”), Danish brygge (“wharf”), Icelandic brygga (“pier”), Gaulish briua (“bridge”).
The verb is from Middle English briggen, from Old English brycġian (“to bridge, make a causeway, pave”), derived from the noun. Cognate with Dutch bruggen (“to bridge”), Middle Low German bruggen (“to bridge”), Old High German bruccōn (“to bridge”) (whence Modern German brücken).
The musical connection sense is a semantic loan from German Steg, from Old High German steg.

ацҳа

construction or natural feature that spans a divide

if someone told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it

(poetry) A point in a line where a break in a word unit cannot occur.


apostrophe

From French apostrophe, or Latin apostrophus, from Ancient Greek ἀπόστροφος (apóstrophos, “accent of elision”), a noun use of an adjective from ἀποστρέφω (apostréphō, “I turn away”), from ἀπό (apó, “away from”) + στρέφω (stréphō, “to turn”).

Since its inception the apostrophe has been a controversial piece of punctuation.

2021, Claire Cock-Starkey, Hyphens & Hashtags, Bodleian Library, page 30:

(orthography) The text character ’, which serves as a punctuation mark in various languages and as a diacritical mark in certain rare contexts.


plasma

en-verb

plasma (third-person singular simple present plasmas, present participle plasmaing, simple past and past participle plasmaed)

plasmas (present singular third-person)
plasmaing (participle present)
plasmaed (participle past)
plasmaed (past)

From Late Latin plasma (“mold”), from Ancient Greek πλάσμα (plásma, “something formed”).

der

(science fiction, transitive) To transform something into plasma.


round

en-adj

round (comparative rounder or more round, superlative roundest or most round)

rounder (comparative)
more round (comparative)
roundest (superlative)
most round (superlative)

From Middle English round, rounde, from Old Northern French roünt, rund, Old French ront, runt, reont ( > French rond), from both Late Latin retundus and the original Latin rotundus. The noun developed partly from the adjective and partly from the corresponding French noun rond. Doublet of rotund.

pyöreä

pronounced with the mouth in the shape of an "O"

(authorship, of a fictional character) Well-written and well-characterized; complex and reminiscent of a real person.


flat

flat (comparative flatter, superlative flattest)

flatter (comparative)
flattest (superlative)

bumpy

antonym(s) of “having no variations in altitude”

→ Portuguese: flat

From Middle English flat, a borrowing from Old Norse flatr (compare Norwegian and Swedish flat, Danish flad), from Proto-Germanic *flataz, from Proto-Indo-European *pleth₂- (“flat”); akin to Saterland Frisian flot (“smooth”), German Flöz (“a geological layer”), Ancient Greek πλατύς (platús), Latvian plats, Sanskrit प्रथस् (prathas, “extension”). Doublet of plat and pleyt.
The noun is from Middle English flat (“level piece of ground, flat edge of a weapon”), from the adjective.
The algebraic sense was coined by Serre in a 1956 paper, originally as French plat.

inh

The author added a chapter to flesh out the book's flatter characters.

(figurative) Lacking liveliness or action; depressed; uninteresting; dull and boring.

(authorship, figuratively, especially of a character) Lacking in depth, substance, or believability; underdeveloped; one-dimensional.


doujinshi

en-noun

doujinshi (countable and uncountable, plural doujinshi or doujinshis)

Borrowed from Japanese 同(どう)人(じん)誌(し) (dōjinshi, “fan-produced manga or essay booklets”), from 同(どう)人(じん) (dōjin, “group for the same interest”) + 誌(し) (shi, “magazine or a pamphlet”).

ja-r

(manga) A fan-produced book or magazine of Japanese fiction; especially manga.


space

en-verb

space (third-person singular simple present spaces, present participle spacing, simple past and past participle spaced)

spaces (present singular third-person)
spacing (participle present)
spaced (participle past)
spaced (past)

From Middle English space, from Anglo-Norman space, variant of espace, espas et al., and spaze, variant of espace, from Latin spatium, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)peh₂- (“to stretch, to pull”).

der

The captain spaced the traitors.

Sound effect of blow with blunt instrument, groan, and the unmistakable cycling of an air lock—Castor: "Sorry, folks. My assistant has just spaced Mr. Rudolf. […]"

1952, Robert A. Heinlein, The Rolling Stones:

A lot of people make jokes about spacing somebody, about shoving somebody out an airlock. I don't think it's funny. Never will.

1995, J. Michael Straczynski, And Now for a Word (Babylon 5), season 2, episode 15, spoken by Dr. Stephen Franklin (Richard Biggs):

(transitive, science fiction) To kill (someone) by ejection into outer space, usually without a space suit.

He well remembered, when he was a junior officer, how the sight of a well dressed, impeccably neat commanding officer, no matter how long they had been spacing, maintained the enthusiasm, confidence and morale of the officers and men.

1947 January 20, Bernard I. Kahn, “Command”, in Astounding Science Fiction, volume 38, number 5:

(intransitive, science fiction) To travel into and through outer space.


hyperbole

en-noun

hyperbole (countable and uncountable, plural hyperboles)

From Middle English iperbole, yperbole, from Latin hyperbolē, from Ancient Greek ὑπερβολή (huperbolḗ, “excess, exaggeration”), from ὑπέρ (hupér, “above”) + βάλλω (bállō, “I throw”). Doublet of hyperbola.

der

Hyperbole soars too high, or creeps too low,
Exceeds the truth, things wonderful to shew.

[1835, L[arret] Langley, A Manual of the Figures of Rhetoric, […], Doncaster: Printed by C. White, Baxter-Gate, →OCLC, page 12:

The great staircase, however, may be termed, without much hyperbole, a feature of grandeur and magnificence.

1837, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Legends of the Province House:

"Nay, nay, good Sumach," interrupted the Deerslayer, whose love of truth was too indomitable to listen to such hyperbole, with patience[…]

1841, J[ames] Fenimore Cooper, chapter VIII, in The Deerslayer: A Tale. […], 1st British edition, volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 248:

c. 1910, Theodore Roosevelt, Productive Scholarship
Of course the hymn has come to us from somewhere else, but I do not know from where; and the average native of our village firmly believes that it is indigenous to our own soil—which it can not be, unless it deals in hyperbole, for the nearest approach to a river in our neighborhood is the village pond.

The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people's fantasies. ..People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It's an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.

1987, Donald Trump, Tony Schwartz, The Art of the Deal, page 58:

In these circumstances, hyperbole is called for, the rhetorical figure that raises its objects up, excessively, way above their actual merit : it is not to deceive by exaggeration that one overshoots the mark, but to allow the true value, the truth of what is insufficiently valued, to appear.

1995, Richard Klein, “Introduction”, in Cigarettes are sublime, Paperback edition, Durham: Duke University Press, published 1993, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 17:

The perennial problem, especially for the BBC, has been to reconcile the hyperbole-driven agenda of newspapers with the requirement of balance, which is crucial to the public service remit.

2001, Tom Bentley, Daniel Stedman Jones, The Moral Universe:

(uncountable, rhetoric, literature) Deliberate or unintentional overstatement, particularly extreme overstatement.


faction

Blind genius of faction / Obituary of Jorge Luis Borges, Argentine writer [title]

1986 June 16, W. J. Weatherby, “Blind genius of faction”, in The Guardian:

Contemporary reviewers offered different labels in attempts to describe the genre of Schindler's List. Lorna Sage, D.J. Enright and Robert Taubman called it a ‘documentary novel’; Paul Bailey and Gay Firth ‘faction’; […]

2000, Sue Vice, Holocaust Fiction, Psychology Press, →ISBN, page 93:

[Norman Mailer] was, though, absolutely the daddy of faction, his novels or journalism reporting every conflict from 1939 to Iraq and biographising Americans including John F Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Muhammad Ali and Neil Armstrong.

2007 November 12, Mark Lawson, “The king of faction”, in The Guardian:

(literature, film) A form of literature, film etc., that treats real people or events as if they were fiction; a mix of fact and fiction.


teek

She stood there dumbfounded as the door swung open and banged against the inside wall, narrowly missing her.¶ I did that, she thought. I'm a... teek?

2011, Nate Kenyon, StarCraft Ghost: Spectres, →ISBN, page 140:

(science fiction) A telekinetic person; a person who has telekinetic abilities.


teek

en-verb

teek (third-person singular simple present teeks, present participle teeking, simple past and past participle teeked)

teeks (present singular third-person)
teeking (participle present)
teeked (participle past)
teeked (past)

Tears of pain came to his eyes—and he didn’t know which hurt more, the pain of the soup on his arm or the real shock he had received when he had forced himself to keep from teeking the falling soup halfway across the room.

1957 April 20, Robert Silverberg, “Hidden Talent”, in Worlds of If, page 27:

With a brief psionic push, Nova teeked them aside and into the rock, firing her rifle at the soft areas just above the creature's rib cage.

2011, Nate Kenyon, StarCraft Ghost: Spectres, →ISBN, page 44:

(science fiction, transitive) To use telekinesis on; to move (something) with the power of one's mind.


charade

From French charade, charrade (“prattle, idle conversation; a kind of riddle”), probably from Occitan charrada (“conversation; chatter”), from charrar (“to chat; to chatter”) + -ada. As a round of the game, originally a clipping of acting charade but now usually understood and formed as a back-formation from charades.

der

CHARADE, a trifling species of composition, or quasi-literary form of amusement, which may perhaps be best defined as a punning enigma propounded in a series of descriptions. A word is taken of two or more syllables, each forming a distinct word; each of these is described in verse or prose, as aptly and enigmatically as possible; and the same process is applied to the whole word. The neater and briefer the descriptive parts of the problem, the better the charade will be. In selecting words for charades, special attention should be paid to the absolute quality of the syllables composing them, inaccuracy in trifles of this sort depriving them of what little claim to merit they may possess. The brilliant rhythmic trifles of W. Mackworth Praed are well known. Of representative prose charades, the following specimens are perhaps as good as could be selected:—“My first, with the most rooted antipathy to a Frenchman, prides himself, whenever they meet, upon sticking close to his jacket; my second has many virtues, nor is its least that it gives its name to my first; my whole may I never catch!” “My first is company; my second shuns company; my third collects company; and my whole amuses company.” The solutions are Tar-tar and Co-nun-drum.

1878, "Charade" in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed., Vol. V, p. 398

(literature, archaic) A genre of riddles where the clues to the answer are descriptions or puns on its syllables, with a final clue to the whole.


tractor beam

Possibly a shortening of attractor beam; note however the broader meaning of tractor (“machinery that pulls something”). Coined by American science fiction author E. E. Smith in 1931 in his novel Spacehounds of IPC, first serialized in Amazing Stories.

coin

Through it Stevens saw with satisfaction that the Forlorn Hope was not being abandoned; in the grip of powerful tractor beams, every fragment of the wreckage was following close behind them in their flight through space.

1931 August, E. E. “Doc” Smith, “Spacehounds of IPC”, in Amazing Stories, volume 6, number 5, page 549:

By the way they're braced, there are tractor beams and pressor beams and—there are vacuum tubes that have grids but apparently work with cold cathodes.

1945 June, Murray Leinster, “The Ethical Equations”, in Astounding Science Fiction, volume 35, number 4, page 122:

We're caught in a tractor beam! It's pulling us in!

1977, George Lucas, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, spoken by Han Solo (Harrison Ford):

(science fiction) A device-generated beam used to attract other objects from a distance.


escape pod

(chiefly science fiction) Any small, secondary, emergency-use vehicle used to evacuate from the main vehicle during times of danger.


manga

en-noun

manga (countable and uncountable, plural manga or mangas)

desc

→ Hindi: मांगा (māṅgā), माँगा (māṅgā), मैंगा (maiṅgā)

Black Cat (manga)
Hokusai
manga (disambiguation)

Borrowed from Japanese 漫画(まんが) (manga), from Middle Chinese 漫 (MC manH, “free, unrestrained”) + 畫 (MC hweaH|hweak, “drawing”). Compare Mandarin 漫畫／漫画 (mànhuà), Korean 만화 (漫畵／漫畫, manhwa). After an 1814 book by Katsushika Hokusai. Doublet of manhua and manhwa.

zh-l

漫畫／漫画 (mànhuà)

English speakers are quick to notice the at times incorrect use of English in anime and manga. Many English words are customarily used in standard Japanese speech, and sometimes they are pronounced and employed in a manner quite different from their native use.

2001, Gilles Poitras, “What makes anime unique”, in Anime Essentials: Every Thing a Fan Needs to Know, page 63:

Manga (Japanese comics) are everywhere. Even here in Auckland. One can find various titles in their original versions as well as in Chinese, Korean and English translations.

2007, Yukako Sunaoshi, “Who reads comics? Manga readership among first-generation Asian immigrants in New Zealand”, in Popular Culture, Globalization and Japan, page 94:

Manga-influenced comics by Western authors are frequently sold alongside manga, although in most bookstores the decision is primarily a matter of format and packaging (i.e., whether the book is printed in the compact manga size or the traditionally larger American comic book format).

2012, Jason Thompson, “Introduction”, in Manga: The Complete Guide, page 46:

(countable, comics) A comic originating in Japan.


stroke

The noun is derived from Middle English strok, stroke (“blow from a weapon, cut”), from Old English strāc, from Proto-West Germanic *straik, from Proto-Germanic *straikaz (“stroke”), from Proto-Indo-European *streyg- (“to rub, stroke; to shear; to strike”).
Sense 3.6.2.2 (“the oblique, slash, or virgule (‘/’)”) is a contraction of oblique stroke, a variant of oblique which was originally used in telegraphy.
The verb is derived from the noun.
cognates
* German Streich (“stroke”)
* Middle Low German strēk (“stroke, trick, prank”)
* Scots strak, strake, straik (“blow, stroke”)

isku

one of a series of beats or movements against a resisting medium, by means of which movement through or upon it is accomplished

ход

single movement or thrust of a part (such as a piston) of a machine that moves back and forth; length of this movement

خَطّ

line or mark made on a surface by an implement for drawing, writing, etc.

A single movement of a paintbrush, chisel, pen, pencil, or similar implement; a line or mark made by such an implement.

(linguistics, calligraphy, typography) A line making up a written character.

筆畫

line making up a written character; specifically, a Chinese, Japanese, or Korean character


acatalectic

From Late Latin acatalēcticus, from Ancient Greek ἀκατάληκτος (akatálēktos, “leaving off”).

der

(poetry, prosody) Designating a line of verse having the required number of syllables in the last foot


acatalectic

(poetry, prosody) A verse which has the complete number of feet and syllables


penultimate

From a substantivation of the above adjective. Equivalent to Latin paenultimus + -ate (noun-forming suffix).

af

Antepenultimate is that before the Penultimate, or the last but two.

(uncommon) A penult, a next to last, particularly:

(linguistics, literature, uncommon) The penultimate syllable of a word or metrical line.


fighter

From Middle English fightere, fyghtor, feghtere, feghtare, fiȝtare, fiȝtere, from Old English feohtere. Equivalent to fight + -er.

Task Force 42 consisted of almost two dozen main line spinships, including the carriers Olympus Shadow and Neptune Station. Each of these can launch more than a hundred fighters or ALRs.

1990, Dan Simmons, The Fall of Hyperion, New York: Doubleday, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 32:

I toss around [37,654 tonne] dreadnoughts like they were fighters; dimly aware of the former crews being crushed to liquescence.

2007 September 25, Bungie, Halo 3, Microsoft Game Studios, Xbox 360, level/area: Terminal Six (Legendary):

A class of fixed-wing aircraft whose primary purpose is to shoot down other aircraft, sometimes accompanied by a secondary purpose of attacking ground targets.

(science fiction, by extension) A starfighter


splash

Probably an alteration of plash (compare spatter, spill for the initial s-).


ABC

en-noun

ABC (countable and uncountable, plural ABCs or ABC's)

From Middle English abece, ABC, from the first three letters of the Latin alphabet, standing for the whole alphabet.

(obsolete, poetry) A type of poem in which the lines start with the letters of the alphabet in order.


PBS

In Chapter 7, she has Victor Frankenstein describe his creation as “handsome”—PBS altered this to “beautiful”, which appears in the final text.

2024 February 17, Erica Wagner, “Kill your darlings”, in FT Weekend, Life & Arts, page 2:

Percy Bysshe Shelley
w:Percy Bysshe Shelley

(literature) Initialism of Percy Bysshe Shelley.


SM

(science fiction) Initialism of space marine.


universe

From Middle English universe, from Old French univers, from Latin universum (“all things, as a whole, the universe”), neuter of universus (“all together, whole, entire, collective, general, literally turned or combined into one”), from uni-, combining form of unus (“one”) + versus (“turned”), perfect passive participle of vertō (“to turn”). Analyzable as uni- + -verse through backformation of -verse.

der

God does not play dice with the universe

Annabelle Comes Home (the 7th and most recent movie in the Conjuring universe, and the 3rd to focus on Annabelle) is a direct sequel to both previous Annabelle movies, which occurred before the events of The Conjuring – but take place after the events of the 2013 franchise-starter.

2019, June 26, Daniel Menegaz, "Tracking Annabelle's confusing journey through the Conjuring universe", Entertainment Weekly

(literature, films) A collection of stories with characters and settings that are less interrelated than those of sequels or prequels.


metre

en-verb

metre (third-person singular simple present metres, present participle metring, simple past and past participle metred)

metres (present singular third-person)
metring (participle present)
metred (participle past)
metred (past)

From Old English, from Latin metrum, from Ancient Greek μέτρον (métron, “measure, rule, length, size, poetic metre”).

der

(poetry, music) To put into metrical form.


echo

en-noun

echo (countable and uncountable, plural echoes or echos)

From Middle English eccho, ecco, ekko, from Medieval Latin ecco, from Latin echo, from Ancient Greek ἠχώ (ēkhṓ), from ἠχή (ēkhḗ, “sound”). Possibly from the same Proto-Indo-European root as sough.

(poetry) A device in verse in which a line ends with a word which recalls the sound of the last word of the preceding line.


exobiology

exobiology (usually uncountable, plural exobiologies)

From exo- + biology, coined by American molecular biologist Joshua Lederberg.

coin

Biology has lately given rise to a new discipline: exobiology, the study of extraterrestrial life. Ever since 1959, when analysis of a piece of meteor substance showed traces of organic compounds, a controversy has raged as to whether these compounds came into the atmosphere with the meteorite or whether they originate on earth.

1973, Lyall Watson, Supernature, page ix. 310:

(biology, science fiction) The branch of biology dealing with lifeforms originating a different planet.

exobiologia

biology dealing with extraterrestrial lifeforms


PG

Although Supergirl fans will relish page 4, I believe the first panel of 5 says it all: after a full force ramming by SG, PG just casually tosses her into a wall. Now *that's* Power Girl.

1997 October 25, Lightning, “REVIEW Power Girl #1, uhm, I mean Supergirl #16”, in rec.arts.comics.dc.universe (Usenet), message-ID <62tta5$a7g$1@206.230.70.77>:

Actually, a point could be made that the animated Supergirl is much more like Power Girl than the pre Crisis Supergirl.
For one thing she adopted the name Karen (Karen Starr was the name Kara Zor-L created), also she wears PG's costume colors and has a strong resentment toward's Clark's overprotectiveness. The only difference is that the animated SG has the Kara Zor-El personality more than she does Power Girl's.

1998 May 6, CaptT...@webtv.net, “Re: Why is TV kind of pre-Crisis and comics Post-Crisis”, in rec.arts.comics.dc.universe (Usenet), message-ID <6iouoe$1jf$1@newsd-134.iap.bryant.webtv.net>:

I kinda hate how they made Power Girl (Kara/SG pre-Crisis on World 2 or 3?) evil and a clone of SG. One of my fav comics growing up was Supes, and PG and I think Green Arrow going after Vandal Savage.

2005 September 21, tan...@bellsouth.net, “Re: JLU - WOW”, in alt.tv.cartoon-network (Usenet), message-ID <SL7Ye.4284$xg3.1881@bignews4.bellsouth.net>:

(comics) Initialism of Power Girl (“DC Comics superheroine”).


artificial intelligence

en-noun

artificial intelligence (countable and uncountable, plural artificial intelligences)

Coined by American computer scientist and cognitive scientist John McCarthy in 1955, and popularized at the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, 1956.

kunsmatige intelligensie

intelligence exhibited by an artificial entity

ሠው ሰራሽ ዕውቀት

śäw säraš ʿəwḳät

artificially intelligent → artificially intelligently

While the humans scurried in confusion, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) created by MIT/Bell Labs linked itself into the network of high-speed, twentieth generation computers placed at its disposal by a Red Alert Priority, evaluated data thoughtfully for a minute and a half and then proceeded to get in touch with its opposite number in the Russian Republics.

1973, Gardner Dozois, Chains of the Sea, →ISBN, Chains of the Sea, page 83:

What Daedadus really is, is the world's first successful wholly autonomous AI. Whatever mysterious organization managed to create the first true artificial intelligence succeeded so well that their creation managed to convince them that they'd failed... and then escaped.

2000, Sheldon Pacotti (writer) & Warren Spector (director/producer), Deus Ex

Dylan Hunt: "This is Captain Dylan Hunt of the High Guard. Investigation has shown that an Artificial Intelligence was involved in the tragic death of your President. In such a case, Commonwealth law demands that the AI's personality be completely erased."

2001 January 15, Walter Jon Williams, All Great Neptune's Ocean (Andromeda), season 1, episode 10:

Also remember that Skynet's an artificial intelligence. Intelligence, for our purpose, means being able to use reason in order to achieve your goals.

2009, Josh Weisberg, “It Stands to Reason: Skynet and Self-preservation”, in Terminator and Philosophy: I'll Be Back, Therefore I Am, →ISBN:

Intelligence exhibited by an artificial (non-natural, man-made) entity.

(countable, chiefly science fiction) An intelligent, self-aware computer or computer program.

kunstmatige intelligentie

science fiction: intelligent, self-aware computer or computer program


mechanics

From Latin mēchanicus, from Ancient Greek μηχανικός (mēkhanikós), from μηχανή (mēkhanḗ, “machine, tool”).


fireball

en-verb

fireball (third-person singular simple present fireballs, present participle fireballing, simple past and past participle fireballed)

fireballs (present singular third-person)
fireballing (participle present)
fireballed (participle past)
fireballed (past)

/ˈfaɪəɹˌbɔl/

Chelyabinsk meteor
Nevada Test Site
Operation Upshot–Knothole

The noun is derived from fire (noun) + ball (noun). The adjective and verb are derived from the noun.

(transitive, fiction, chiefly fantasy, science fiction) To attack (someone or something) with balls of fire.

hyökätä tulipalloin

to attack (someone or something) with balls of fire


Saturnian

en-adj

Saturnian (comparative more Saturnian, superlative most Saturnian)

more Saturnian (comparative)
most Saturnian (superlative)

(poetry) Involving a meter consisting of three iambics and an extra syllable followed by three trochees, employed by satirists in Ancient Rome.


Saturnian

(science fiction) An inhabitant of the planet Saturn.


protagonist

Penguin Books
The Independent
The Sense of Style
protagonist

From Ancient Greek πρωταγωνιστής (prōtagōnistḗs, “a chief actor”), from πρῶτος (prôtos, “first”) + ἀγωνιστής (agōnistḗs, “a combatant, pleader, actor”). By surface analysis, prot- (“first”) + agonist (“combatant, participant”).

der

πρωταγωνιστής

surf

(authorship) The main character, or one of the main characters, in any story, such as a literary work or drama.


hook

sometimes in Northern England and Ireland, otherwise obsolete

From Middle English hoke, from Old English hōc, from Proto-West Germanic *hōk, from Proto-Germanic *hōkaz, variant of *hakô (“hook”), probably ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kog-, *keg-, *keng- (“peg, hook, claw”).
Cognates
Compare West Frisian heak, Dutch haak (“hook”)) (compare West Frisian/Dutch hoek (“hook, angle, corner”), Low German Hook, Huuk); also related to hake.

(authorship) A brief, punchy opening statement intended to get attention from an audience, reader, or viewer, and make them want to continue to listen to a speech, read a book, or watch a play.


psi

en-noun

psi (countable and uncountable, plural psis)

From Ancient Greek ψεῖ (pseî), the name for the twenty-third letter of the alphabet (Ψ, ψ).

‘Come, lad,’ he said. ‘We will take tea together and speak of the noumenon, the psi and other more heterogenous phenomena.’

When an event is classified as a psi phenomenon, it is claimed that all known channels for the apparent interaction have been eliminated.

1996, Michael F. Stoeber, Hugo Anthony Meynell, Critical Reflections on the Paranormal (page 60)

It traces the growth of homo gestalt with the uniting of six lovely outcasts of society who have psi powers and come together as a hive mind, thus creating a gestalt super-being.

2005, Michael Ashley, Transformations: The History of the Science Fiction Magazine 1950 to 1970, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, page 133:

(uncountable, parapsychology, science fiction) A form of psychic energy.


matrix

From Middle English matris, matrice, matrix, from Old French matrice (“pregnant animal”), or from Latin mātrīx (“dam, womb”), both ultimately from māter (“mother”). Doublet of mother from Indo-European ancestor.
Slang usage coined with the 1999 sci-fi action film The Matrix.

基質

analytical chemistry: sampling environment

He'd operated on an almost permanent adrenaline high, a byproduct of youth and proficiency, jacked into a custom cyberspace deck that projected his disembodied consciousness into the consensual hallucination that was the matrix.

1984, William Gibson, Neuromancer (Sprawl; book 1), New York, N.Y.: Ace Books, →ISBN, page 5:

Mari Otsu, a 25-year-old Japanese-Hawaiian artist, tells me she was “desperately lonely” while she was studying at New York University, when she “realised that [she]^([sic]) was in the matrix”. I ask her what she means.

2023 October 28, Jemima Kelly, “Back to school”, in FT Weekend, Life & Arts, page 20:

(slang, figurative, science fiction) Alternative letter-case form of Matrix; a controlled environment or situation in which people behave in ways that conform to pre-determined roles.


acute

en-adj

acute (comparative acuter or more acute, superlative acutest or most acute)

acuter (comparative)
more acute (comparative)
acutest (superlative)
most acute (superlative)

From Late Middle English acute (“of a disease or fever: starting suddenly and lasting for a short time; of a humour: irritating, sharp”), from Latin acūta, from acūtus (“sharp, sharpened”), perfect passive participle of acuō (“to make pointed, sharpen, whet”), from acus (“needle, pin”). The word is cognate to ague (“acute, intermittent fever”).
As regards the noun, which is derived from the verb, compare Middle English acūte (“severe but short-lived fever; of blood: corrosiveness, sharpness; musical note of high pitch”).

cog

The last letter of ‘café’ is ‘e’ acute.

A more conservative approach, particularly if your author is a skilled computer user, would be to replace the problem characters with simple words or codes that are guaranteed to transfer successfully between computers. For example, you could replace é with e-acute if that particular character is causing problems. […] The author could then do a search and replace to change all instances of e-acute back to é before publication.

2007, Geoff[rey J. S.] Hart, “Editing in Special Situations”, in Effective Onsceen Editing: New Tools for an Old Profession, Pointe-Claire, Que.: Diaskeuasis Publishing, →ISBN, page 404:

Commonly used European accents are available as below: / á Á a acute / […] / é É e acute / […] / í Í i acute / […] / ó Ó o acute / […] / ú Ú u acute

2017, [Michael] Mitchell, [Susan] Wightman, “Foreign Languages”, in Typographic Style Handbook, London: MacLehose Press, →ISBN, section 10.2.1 (Commonly Used Accents), page 143:

(orthography, postpositive) Of a letter of the alphabet, having an acute accent.

agut

(orthography) after a letter of the alphabet: having an acute accent


acute

The word ‘cafe’ often has an acute over the ‘e’.

The number of Notes in this Table, without either acute or grave marks (´ or `), is 75. Of those bearing one acute mark (´) it is 74, of those with two acutes (´´) 70, with three acutes (´´´ or ´³) 51, […]

1817 June, John Farey, Sen., “CI. On Mr. Listons, or the Euharmonic Scale of Musical Intervals, […]”, in Alexander Tilloch, editor, The Philosophical Magazine and Journal: […], volume XLIX, number 230, London: Printed by Richard and Arthur Taylor. […], →OCLC, page 445:

The five vowels marked with acutes over them, it is probable, were first contrived to assist the ignorant monks in reading the church service, that by this means they might arrive to a proper and settled pronunciation in the discharge of their sacerdotal duties; […]

1824, J[ohn] Johnson, “A Fount of Letter, as Considered by Letter Founders”, in Typographia, or The Printers’ Instructor: […], volume II, London: Published by Messrs. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green, […], →OCLC, page 34:


arcadian

en-adj

arcadian (comparative more arcadian, superlative most arcadian)

more arcadian (comparative)
most arcadian (superlative)

/ɑɹˈkeɪdɪən/

(literature) Ideally rustic or pastoral.


mail

en-noun

mail (usually uncountable, plural mails)

From Middle English mayle (“mail armor”), borrowed from Old French maille (“loop, stitch”), from Vulgar Latin *macla, from Latin macula (“blemish, mesh”), probably from Proto-Indo-European *smh₁-tleh₂, from *smeh₁- (“smear, rub”).

thurak

armour consisting of metal rings or plates linked together

(uncountable, by extension, now fiction, fantasy) Armour consisting of small plates linked together.


virgule

Borrowed from Middle French virgule, from Latin virgula (“twig; scratch comma”), from virga (“rod, branch”) + -ulus (diminutive suffix). Doublet of virgula.

(typography, dated) A pipe, ⟨|⟩.
(poetry) Used to mark metrical feet.

A pipe, ⟨|⟩.
Used to mark metrical feet.


reference

reference (countable and uncountable, plural references)

From Middle French référence, from Medieval Latin referentia, nominative neuter plural of referēns, present participle of referō (“return, reply”, literally “carry back”). Morphologically refer + -ence.

verwysing

academic writing: identification of a source

(academic writing) A short written identification of a previously published work which is used as a source for a text.

(academic writing) A previously published written work thus indicated; a source.


antagonist

From Latin antagonista, from Ancient Greek ἀνταγωνιστής (antagōnistḗs, “opponent”) (ἀντί (antí, “against”) + ἀγωνιστής (agōnistḗs, “a combatant, pleader, actor”)), from ἀνταγωνίζομαι (antagōnízomai, “to antagonize”).

der

ἀνταγωνιστής

So God forbid I'm seen just as an average human being / I mean, imagine if antagonists lacked any evil scheme

2022, Will Wood (musician) (lyrics and music), “The Main Character”, in In case I make it,, performed by Will Wood:

(authorship) The main character or force opposing the protagonist in a literary work or drama.


subtext

en-noun

subtext (countable and uncountable, plural subtexts)

→ Hebrew: סאבטקסט (sábtekst)

Everyone heard the announcement, but not everyone agrees on what the subtext was.

The word dick has meant penis since the 1890s, but Chester Gould’s private detective “Dick Tracy” has no puerile subtext related to this word.

2011, Patrick Spedding, James Lambert, “Fanny Hill, Lord Fanny, and the Myth of Metonymy”, in Studies in Philology, volume 108, number 1, page 113:

While his major plays appear on the surface to have little plot, their subtext is full of overheated romance and melodrama.

2012 July 27, Jason Zinoman, “Chekhov's Banana Peel”, in Slate:

(authorship) The implicit meaning of a text, often a literary one, or a speech or dialogue.


historical

en-adj

historical (comparative more historical, superlative most historical)

more historical (comparative)
most historical (superlative)

From Latin historicus (“historical”) + -al (forming adjectives denoting of or relating to). By surface analysis, history + -ical.

suf

Hagiography, the historical genre which is the subject of this week's seminar, comprises narratives concerned with the saints and their achievements, especially the miracles which God has performed through them and on their behalf.

2017 December 8, Paul Hayward, “Seminar VII: Hagiography”, in Medieval Primary Sources—Genre, Rhetoric and Transmission:

There is no acknowledgment—because there is no understanding—that sometimes historical fiction departs from facts in order to reach for more abstract, thematic, or complexly intuitive truths that even the most diligently fact-checked histories and biographies can fail to illuminate.

2015 January 28, Mark Harris, “How 'Selma' Got Smeared”, in Grantland:

Of, concerning, or in accordance with recorded history, (particularly) as opposed to legends, myths, and fictions.

(literature, art) About history; depicting persons or events from history.

Of, concerning, or in accordance with the past generally.


Gothic

en-adj

Gothic (comparative more Gothic, superlative most Gothic)

more Gothic (comparative)
most Gothic (superlative)

From Late Latin gothicus (“Gothic, barbaric”), from Ancient Greek Γοτθικός (Gotthikós), from Ancient Greek Γότθοι (Gótthoi, “Goths”) + -ικός (-ikós, “-ic”), proposed to derive from unattested Gothic *𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌰 (*guta). Equivalent to Goth + -ic. The various usages of the adjective are introduced nearly simultaneously in the first half of the 17th century. The literal meaning “of the Goths” is found in the 1611 preface of the King James Bible, in reference to the Gothicke tongue. The generalized meaning of “Germanic, Teutonic” appears in the 1640s. Reference to the medieval period in Western Europe, and specifically the architecture of that period (“barbaric style”, initially a term of abuse), also appears in the 1640s, as does reference to “Gothic characters” or “Gothic letters” in typography.

готически

of the type formerly used for printing German

Gothic tales

Shelley's two early novels Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne are, as many scholars have noted, obviously connected to the tradition of the Gothic novel; as well, two volumes of early poetry contain Gothic elements and his tragedy The Cenci has been […]

1975, John V. Murphy, The Dark Angel: Gothic Elements in Shelley's Works, Bucknell University Press, →ISBN, page 9:

(literature) Of or relating to the style of fictional writing associated with Gothic fiction, emphasizing violent or macabre events in a mysterious, desolate setting.

готически

of or relating to a style of fictional writing


extragalactic

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-extragalactic.wav

(science fiction) Originating outside of the local galaxy.


glass

en-verb

glass (third-person singular simple present glasses, present participle glassing, simple past and past participle glassed)

glasses (present singular third-person)
glassing (participle present)
glassed (participle past)
glassed (past)

From Middle English glas, from Old English glæs, from Proto-West Germanic *glas, from Proto-Germanic *glasą, possibly related to Proto-Germanic *glōaną (“to shine”) (compare glow), and ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root *ǵʰel- (“to shine, shimmer, glow”). Cognate with West Frisian glês, Dutch glas, Low German Glas, German Glas, Swedish glas, Icelandic gler.

“The Covenant don’t ‘miss’ anything when they glass a planet,” the Master Chief replied.

2003, Eric Nylund, Halo: First Strike, New York: Del Rey, →ISBN, page 155:

(transitive, science fiction) To bombard an area with such intensity (by means of a nuclear bomb, fusion bomb, etc) as to melt the landscape into glass.


synopsis

From Late Latin synopsis, itself from Ancient Greek σύνοψις (súnopsis), from σύν (sún, “with or whole”) + ὄψις (ópsis, “view”) meaning whole view.

(authorship) A brief summary of the major points of a written work, either as prose or as a table; an abridgment or condensation of a work.


teleporter

(science fiction) A device used for teleporting.


cyberspace

en-noun

cyberspace (countable and uncountable, plural cyberspaces)

Blend of cybernetics + space, equivalent to cyber- + space, coined by American-Canadian speculative fiction writer William Gibson in his 1982 short story collection Burning Chrome and popularized in his 1984 novel Neuromancer.

coin

I knew every chip in Bobby's simulator by heart; it looked like your workaday Ono-Sendai VII, the ‘Cyberspace Seven’, but I'd rebuilt it so many times that you'd have had a hard time finding a square millimetre of factory circuitry in all that silicon.

1982 July, William Gibson, “Burning Chrome”, in Omni, volume 4, number 10, page 72:

Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts… A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding…

1984, William Gibson, Neuromancer (Sprawl; book 1), New York, N.Y.: Ace Books, →ISBN, page 51:

(science fiction) A three-dimensional representation of virtual space in a computer network.

կիբերտարածք

science fiction: three-dimensional representation of virtual space


entity

From the Medieval Latin entitās, from ēns (“being”) (stem: ent-) + -tās (compare essentia), see there for more information.

Appendix:Roget MICRA thesaurus/Class I § 1. Existence

(science fiction) An alien lifeform that has no corporeal body.


carrier

но́сьбіт

And each was hideously powerful: an attack carrier could destroy a world, a force of cruisers and spinship destroyers could destroy a sun.

1990, Dan Simmons, The Fall of Hyperion, 1st edition, New York: Doubleday, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 114:

The first carrier completely ignored us, sir! Blew through the Malta’s debris field and headed straight for Earth!

2004 November 9, Bungie, Halo 2, spoken by Cortana (Jen Taylor), Microsoft Game Studios, Xbox, level/area: Cairo Station:

In fleet combat, carriers stay clear of battle, launching fighters bearing disruptor torpedoes. Fighters are the primary striking power of the ship; if a carrier enters mass accelerator range of the enemy, things have gone very wrong.
It is possible to recover and rearm fighters during combat, though most carriers seal the flight deck and try to stay out of the way. The flight deck is essentially a corridor through the armor and into the heart of the vessel. A single well-placed torpedo is enough to gut a carrier.
Alliance carriers are named after great leaders, artists, and intellectuals from human history.

2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Starships: Carriers Codex entry:

aircraft carrier
aircraft carrier#English

A person or object that carries someone or something else.

(science fiction, by extension) A starship designed to carry starfighters


basilisk

From Middle English basilicke, borrowed from Old French basilique, from Latin basiliscus, from Ancient Greek βασιλίσκος (basilískos) (literally "minor king or chieftain", possibly based on descriptions or rare encounters with different types of cobra which have crown-like patterns on their head; the "deadly gaze" could have been from the spitting cobra's ability to spit venom into the eyes of predators or prey from a distance), from βασιλεύς (basileús, “king”). The cognitohazard/infohazard sense is by analogy with the deadly gaze of the mythical creature.

A basilisk, in this context, is information that can hurt you simply because you are aware of it.

2019 June 13, Tom Chivers, The AI Does Not Hate You, Orion Publishing Group, →ISBN:

(science fiction) An infohazard or cognitohazard, especially a Langford's basilisk.


quinzaine

(poetry) A piece of verse having fifteen syllables.


speaker

From Middle English speker, spekere, an alteration (with change of suffix) of Old English speca, spreca (“speaker”), from Proto-Germanic *sprekô (“speaker”), equivalent to speak + -er. Compare Saterland Frisian Spreeker (“speaker”), West Frisian sprekker (“speaker”), Dutch spreker (“speaker”), German Low German Spreker (“speaker”), German Sprecher (“speaker”).

puhuja

linguistics: producer of a given utterance

Popular culture often incorrectly attributes quotes from the speakers of poems or songs to the authors thereof, as when "I took the one less traveled by" is attributed to Robert Frost rather than to the speaker in Frost's "The Road Not Taken".

(especially in linguistics) The producer of a given utterance, whether speech or text.

(poetry) The literary character uttering the lyrics of a poem or song, as opposed to the author writing the words of that character.


fiction

en-noun

fiction (countable and uncountable, plural fictions)

→ Irish: ficsean

→ Scottish Gaelic: ficsean

From Middle English ficcioun, from Old French ficcion (“dissimulation, ruse, invention”), from Latin fictiō (“a making, fashioning, a feigning, a rhetorical or legal fiction”), from fingō (“to form, mold, shape, devise, feign”). Displaced native Old English lēasspell (literally “false story”).

ncog

I am a great reader of fiction.

the fiction section of the library

(literature) Literary type using invented or imaginative writing, instead of real facts, usually written as prose.


credit

en-noun

credit (countable and uncountable, plural credits)

Borrowed from Middle French crédit (“belief, trust”), from Latin crēditum (“a loan, credit”), neuter of crēditus, past participle of crēdere (“to believe”). The verb is from the noun. Doublet of shraddha, creed.

To repair your star cruiser will cost 100,000 credits.

Aside from the fact that she means nearly ten million credits investment, which no one will insure on this trip, there will necessarily be seventy-three men aboard.

1934 December, John W. Campbell, Jr., “The Mightiest Machine”, in Astounding Stories, volume XIV, number 4, Street & Smith, page 12:

The standard credit was established by the Citadel's Unified Banking Act as the currency of interstellar trade. The credit has a managed floating exchange rate, calculated in real time by the central bank to maintain the average value of all participating currencies. Some regional currencies are worth more than a credit and some less.

2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Credits ("Creds") Codex entry:

"First the Patrons wipe-out our home world, now you blow any chance of us making any credits," Kane said in his gruff sinking voice.

2016, A.K. Brown, Jumpstart (Champagne Universe Series: Book 1), page 19:

(science fiction) A unit of currency used in a fictional universe or timeframe.


portal

From Middle English portal, porttol, from Old French portal and Medieval Latin portāle, from porta.

jet bridge

elevated corridor permitting access to a plane from an airport

(science fiction and fantasy) A magical or technological doorway leading to another location, period in time or dimension.


portal

en-verb

portal (third-person singular simple present portals, present participle portaling or portalling, simple past and past participle portaled or portalled)

portals (present singular third-person)
portaling (participle present)
portalling (participle present)
portaled (participle past)
portaled (past)
portalled (participle past)
portalled (past)

(science fiction, fantasy) To use a portal (magical or technological doorway).


fool

full (accents with FOOT-GOOSE merger or full-fool merger)

From Middle English fole (“fool”), from Old French fol (cf. modern French fou (“mad”)) from Latin follis. Doublet of follis and folly. Displaced native Old English dwæs.

(literature) A stock character typified by unintelligence, naïveté or lucklessness, usually as a form of comic relief; often used as a source of insight or pathos for the audience, as such characters are generally less bound by social expectations.


Venus

en-noun

Venus (countable and uncountable, plural Venuses)

From Middle English Venus, from Latin Venus.

Immoderate Venus in excess, as it is a cause, or in defect; so, moderately used, to some parties an only help, a present remedy.

(obsolete or poetry) Sexual activity or intercourse, sex; lust, love.


imp

From Middle English impe, ympe (“tree branch; shoot, sprig; graft, scion; young tree, sapling, seedling; tree”) [and other forms], from Old English impa, impe (“shoot, sprig; graft, scion; young tree, sapling, seedling”), from impian, ġeimpian (“to graft”) (see etymology 1).

"Yes, there are a great, great many coming after us; at least a score," said the lad.—"Well, that's the troll," said the horse; "he is coming after us with his imps."

1881, P. Chr. Asbjörnsen [i.e., Peter Christen Asbjørnsen], “The Widow’s Son”, in H[ans] L[ien] Brækstad, transl., Round the Yule Log: Norwegian Folk and Fairy Tales, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, →OCLC, page 218:

It was as if there were little imps dancing in my mouth, and every so often, when a situation arose, they'd get together, giggle wickedly, and try to push words out of my open mouth.

1981 December 1, Ruth Geller, “The Lesbian Teacher”, in Gay Community News, volume 12, number 20, page 5:

(chiefly fiction and mythology) A small, mischievous sprite or a malevolent supernatural creature, somewhat comparable to a demon but smaller and less powerful, formerly regarded as the child of the devil or a demon (see sense 3.2).


interpolation

interpolation (countable and uncountable, plural interpolations)

/ɪnˌtɜː(ɹ)pəˈleɪʃən/

From French interpolation, from Latin interpolatio.
Morphologically interpolate + -ion

Today a widely established convention encloses all editorial interpolations in square brackets [like so] for clarity.

Bentley wrote a letter […] upon the scriptural glosses in our present copies of Hesychius, which he considered interpolations from a later hand.

1830, Thomas De Quincey, Life of Richard Bentley:

We, who are born into the world's artificial system, can never adequately know how little in our present state and circumstances is natural, and how much is merely the interpolation of the perverted mind and heart of man.

1843, Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The New Adam and Eve”, in Mosses from an Old Manse. […], part II, New York, N.Y.: Wiley and Putnam, published 1846, →OCLC, page 1:

(editing, content analysis) That which is introduced or inserted; in contexts of content analysis of centuries-old texts, especially something foreign or spurious.


tripod

PIE word
 *tréyes
Borrowed from Latin tripūs, tripodis, from Ancient Greek τρίπους (trípous); equivalent to tri- + -pod. Doublet of tripus and teapoy.

(science fiction) A fictional three-legged Martian war machine from H.G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds (1897).


worm

From Middle English worm, werm, wurm, wirm, from Old English wyrm (“worm, snake”), from Proto-Germanic *wurmiz, from Proto-Indo-European *wr̥mis, possibly from *wer- (“to turn”). Doublet of vermin and wyrm, the latter of which is a fairly recent borrowing directly from the Old English.
(computing): First computer usage by John Brunner in his 1975 book The Shockwave Rider.
cognates
Germanic cognates include Dutch worm, West Frisian wjirm, German Wurm, Swedish orm (“snake”), Norwegian Nynorsk orm (“earthworm or snake”), Danish orm and Yiddish וואָרעם (vorem).
Indo-European cognates include Latin vermis (“worm”), Lithuanian var̃mas (“insect, midge”), Albanian rrime (“rainworm”), Ancient Greek ῥόμος (rhómos, “woodworm”).

шнек

something helical, especially the thread of a screw

Mongolian death worm
Mongolian death worm

(fantasy, science fiction) Either a mythical "dragon" (especially wingless), a gigantic sea serpent, or a creature that resembles a Mongolian death worm.


soul

en-noun

soul (countable and uncountable, plural souls)

→ German: Soul

→ Esperanto: soulo

→ French: soul

→ Hungarian: soul

→ Italian: soul

→ Japanese: ソウル

→ Polish: soul

→ Portuguese: soul

→ Romanian: soul

→ Scots: sowel

→ Spanish: soul

From Middle English soule, sowle, saule, sawle, from Old English sāwol (“soul, life, spirit, being”), from Proto-West Germanic *saiwalu, from Proto-Germanic *saiwalō (“soul”), of uncertain ultimate origin (see there for further information). Cognate with Scots saul, sowel (“soul”), North Frisian siel, sial (“soul”), Saterland Frisian Seele (“soul”), West Frisian siel (“soul”), Dutch ziel (“soul”), German Seele (“soul”) Scandinavian homonyms seem to have been borrowed from Old Saxon *siala. Modern Danish sjæl, Swedish själ, Norwegian sjel, Icelandic sál, Finnish sielu may have come from Old English sāwol.

inh

1836, Hans Christian Andersen (translated into English by Mrs. H. B. Paull in 1872), The Little Mermaid
"Among the daughters of the air," answered one of them. "A mermaid has not an immortal soul, nor can she obtain one unless she wins the love of a human being. On the power of another hangs her eternal destiny. But the daughters of the air, although they do not possess an immortal soul, can, by their good deeds, procure one for themselves.

No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the veranda, smoking cigarettes, or[…]. And at last I began to realize in my harassed soul that all elusion was futile, and to take such holidays as I could get, when he was off with a girl, in a spirit of thankfulness.

1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC, page 46:

Flowey: See that heart? That is your SOUL, the very culmination of your being!

2015 September 15, Toby Fox, Undertale, Linux, Microsoft Windows, OS X:

(religion, folklore) The spirit or essence of a person usually thought to consist of one's thoughts and personality, often believed to live on after the person's death.

аԥсы

the spirit or essence of a person that is often believed to live on after the person's death


tone

From Middle English ton, tone, from Latin tonus (“sound, tone”) (possibly through Old French ton), from Ancient Greek τόνος (tónos, “strain, tension, pitch”), from τείνω (teínō, “I stretch”). Doublet of tune, ton, tonos, and tonus.

der

Their tone was dissatisfied, almost menacing.

1850, William Cullen Bryant, Letters of a Traveller:

en:in language, the manner of expression

(language, literature) The manner in which speech or writing is expressed, especially the aspects of diction (word choice), connotation, emotiveness, and register.


torch

The noun is derived from Middle English torch, torche (“large candle; lighted stick; (figurative) sunbeam”), from Old French torche, torque (“torch; bundle of (twisted) straw”) (modern French torche); further etymology uncertain, probably from Vulgar Latin *torca (“coiled object”) (referring to a torch made from twisted plant fibres dipped in a flammable substance such as pitch), from Latin torqua, a variant of torquis (“collar of twisted metal, torque; wreath”), from torqueō (“to twist, wind”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *terkʷ- (“to spin; to turn”).
Sense 2.3 (Verbascum thapsus) is either due to the plant’s spike of yellow flowers, or because its leaves and stalks were used to make torches (noun sense 1). Sense 3.2 (“precious cause, etc., which needs to be protected and transmitted to others”) is derived from Latin lampada trādere, from Ancient Greek λᾰμπᾰ́δᾰ πᾰρᾰδιδόναι (lampáda paradidónai, “to hand over the torch”), a reference to the torch race held at various festivals such as the Panathenaic Games in Ancient Greece, which involved a relay where a torch was passed from one runner to another.
The verb is derived from the noun.

cog

λᾰμπᾰ́δᾰ πᾰρᾰδιδόναι

sueo'

stick of wood, etc., with one end soaked in a flammable substance and set on fire; similarly shaped implement with a replaceable supply of flammable material

(science fiction) Short for torch drive (“a spacecraft engine which produces thrust by nuclear fusion”).


torch

en-verb

torch (third-person singular simple present torches, present participle torching, simple past and past participle torched)

torches (present singular third-person)
torching (participle present)
torched (participle past)
torched (past)

cog

λᾰμπᾰ́δᾰ πᾰρᾰδιδόναι

(science fiction) To travel in a spacecraft propelled by a torch drive (“an engine which produces thrust by nuclear fusion”).

to travel in a spacecraft propelled by a torch drive

matkustaa fuusiolla toimivalla avaruusaluksella


essay

Since late 16th century, borrowed from Middle French essay, essai (“essay”), meaning coined by Montaigne in the same time, from the same words in earlier meanings 'experiment; assay; attempt', from Old French essay, essai, assay, assai, from Latin exagium (“weight; weighing, testing on the balance”), from exigere + -ium.

der

In his first book since the 2008 essay collection Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature, David Quammen looks at the natural world from yet another angle: the search for the next human pandemic, what epidemiologists call “the next big one.”

2013 January 20, Katie L. Burke, “Ecological Dependency”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 1, archived from the original on 2017-02-09, page 64:

(authorship) A written composition of moderate length, exploring a particular issue or subject.


defective

en-adj

defective (comparative more defective, superlative most defective)

more defective (comparative)
most defective (superlative)

From Middle English defectif, defective, from Old French defectif, from Late Latin dēfectīvus.

(orthography, of a script) Not capable of representing all the phonemic distinctions of a language it is used to write.


nano

en-noun

nano (countable and uncountable, plural nanos)

From nano-, from Latin nānus, from Ancient Greek νᾶνος (nânos).

(countable, science fiction) A nanotechnological device, such as a computer

(countable, science fiction) A nanoscale device, such as a robot


chapter

→ Cebuano: tsapter

From Middle English chapitre, from Old French chapitre, from Latin capitulum (“a chapter of a book, in Medieval Latin also a synod or council”), diminutive of caput (“a head”); see capital, capitulum, and chapiter, which are doublets of chapter.

der

Detective novel writers try to keep up the suspense until the last chapter.

At her invitation he outlined for her the succeeding chapters with terse military accuracy ; and what she liked best and best understood was avoidance of that false modesty which condescends, turning technicality into pabulum.

1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter VIII, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:

(authorship) One of the main sections into which the text of a book is divided.

CHAPTER - One of the principal divisions of a book, and, in reference to the Bible, one of the larger sections into which its books are divided. This division, as well as that consisting of verses, was introduced to facilitate reference, and not to indicate any natural or accurate division of the subjects treated in the books.

1842, Walter Farquahar Hook, A Church Dictionary, published 1896:

At least thirty-two of the first forty-seven decretal chapters were received by English ecclesiastics,

1963, Charles Duggan, Twelfth-century Decretal Collections and Their Importance in English History, page 127:

il conclut: « No pope, no collection but the masters who served the one and commented on the other ultimately determined the content of this decretal chapter».

1983, Revue théologique de Louvain - Volume 14, page 127:

But unlike a similar annotation, it has not been turned into a chapter title because the annotation “de quodam hermita” (Of a certain hermit) immediately preceded it. If a scribe had also turned Liberauit Dominus hermitam into a chapter title, he would have created a chapter that consisted of a single sentence, which even for a rather dull scribe would seem unacceptable. […] While scribe A wrote the body of the text of the De nugis curialium, scribe X contributed the rubricated chapter headings.

2017, Joshua Byron Smith, Walter Map and the Matter of Britain, page 67:

While rubrics do not appear in paper manuscripts, eight paper manuscripts contain chapter titles, which serve the same function as the medieval rubrics.

2018, Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir, Emily Lethbridge, New Studies in the Manuscript Tradition of Njáls saga, page xvii:

Characteristics: parchment; 92 fols.; 260 × 180 mm.; 32 lines; Italy; ca. 1430; two hands: humanistic rotunda with some Gothic features; marginal notes by first hand and names by a second hand; space left for initials; rubric inscriptions; superscript variants by first hand; chapters marked in margin; horizontal catchwords; quaternions.

2018, David J. Hunt, A Textual History of Cicero's Academici Libri, page 152:

From canon law, he cited Gratian's Decretum, Gregory's Decretales, the Sexto and Clementines Decretales, and the Extravagantes, and specifically referred to “the rules for understanding the Law” in a decretal chapter on Propterea.

2021, David T. Orique, The Unheard Voice of Law in Bartolomé de Las Casas’s Brevísima Relación de la Destruición de las Indias, page 97:

A section of a work, a collection of works, or fragments of works, often manuscripts or transcriptions, created by scholars or advocates, not the original authors, to aid in finding portions of the texts.


-er

Li’er said hello to his father.

Yue’er began to laugh again and her tears shimmered like dew on a lotus leaf disturbed by a breeze. Then we heard a sound. It was Man’er.

The fish was laid out on the table, but Ping’er had not come back, nor had his father.

2002 [1934], Xiao Hong, “The Field of Life and Death”, in Howard Goldblatt, transl., The Field of Life and Death & Tales of Hulan River, →ISBN, page 32:

Ying’er was not yet three years old. Li’er had always been the one to play with her or to carry her places on his back.

2014 [1959], Zhong Lihe, “The Little Ridge”, in T. M. McClellan, transl., From the Old Country: Stories and Sketches of China and Taiwan, →ISBN, page 202:

(Chinese literature) Junior, child, younger person. (Attached to a name, usually one syllable of the given name.)


mechanical

From Middle English mechanical, mechanicalle, mechanycalle, equivalent to mechanic + -al.

Is it a mechanical, or a man in a clockwork suit?

2012, Cindy Spencer Pape, Moonlight & Mechanicals, →ISBN, page 90:

Mechanicals arose when advanced, organic societies somehow committed suicide, from war, degeneration, unimaginable things -- or retreated, from plain simple lack of interest in the tensions of the technological life.

2013, Gregory Benford, Sailing Bright Eternity: Galactic Centre, →ISBN:

This is an example of what can take place when mechanicals are programmed with human attributes and designed to interact closely with humans.

2013, Alan Dean Foster, Greenthieves, →ISBN:

(science fiction) A robot or mechanical creature.


flying saucer

From an interview given by amateur pilot Kenneth Arnold who described seeing nine flying objects that were "moving like saucers being skimmed across a lake". The description was not meant to describe the shape of the objects, only how they maneuvered, yet the misinterpretation took hold and gained popularity.

en:Flying saucer (confectionery)
en:flying saucer

(science fiction) An alien interplanetary vessel, typically disc-shaped and of metallic construction.


umlaut

Borrowed from German Umlaut in the 19ᵗʰ century, from um- or um (“around, re-, trans-”) + Laut (“sound”), from Old High German hlūt. More at loud.

(orthography) The diacritical mark ( ¨ ) placed over a vowel when it indicates a (rounded) front vowel

"Naïve" takes an umlaut because it is pronounced as two syllables.

(informal, orthography) Synonym of diaeresis


bizarro

en-adj

bizarro (comparative more bizarro, superlative most bizarro)

more bizarro (comparative)
most bizarro (superlative)

Variant of bizarre, equivalent to bizarre + -o; see that entry for more information. In the sense of “logical inverse”, derived via the comic book character Bizarro, an inverted version of Superman from a planet where “good” means “bad” and so on, and popularized by "The Bizarro Jerry", a 1996 episode of the sitcom Seinfeld.

An incredibly fucked-up parody of B-horror movies with a bizarro slant.

2010, Caris O'Malley, The Egg Said Nothing, Caris O'Malley, →ISBN, page 97:

(literature) Pertaining to bizarro fiction.