Sci-fi swear words?

[TheQuestionMan]

FireFly Chinese Quotes and Translations
http://www.browncoats.com/index.php?...=3e546fb171d22

That's Shiny completely da bien hua.

QM

[Fenixcrest]

From Transformers:
Slag, being the general expletive taking the place of the S-word. "Aw, SLAG"/"What a slag-head."

[DrFaust]

Another good "Farscape" one is "frennik," as in "That frennik Rygel got us in it again."

[keithcurtis]

Here is a pretty definitive-looking list:
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=497833

Keith "not re-inventing the wheel" Curtis

[Basil]

"Felgercarb" should be "feldacarb" and is in use for "that, ya know, guck. The stuff whose name I forgot" in parts of the mid-west USA. I had a friend who came from south Indiana, used the word all the time. BTW, that means it's not a swear word, any more than "thingamabob" or "wossname" is.

"Flup" from Niven's Ringworld stories.

I, too, always though "smeg" was short for "smegma."

I'm trying to remember where I saw "ham it to dell".

[keithcurtis]

Sources vary on the spelling of the classic Galactica word. Although it was never precisely defined, it's usage seems to indicate at least a pejorative, as in, "What is this feldercarb!?"

Here's a page that lists several spelling varients:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...al_curse_words
I'd post the actual entry, but it contains a real swear word.

BTW, how long ago did your friend use the word? Galactica is over 27 years old.

Keith "Now I feel old..." Curtis

PS. Smeg is absolutely short for smegma, as verified in numerous interviews.

[tkdguy]

Oh drek, I forgot all about Belgium!

Age of Empires does have "Ahh, smite me!" And HM Murdock of the A-Team often called BA Barracus an "ugly mudsucker."

Of course, RA Salvatore wrote my favorite curse in The Crystal Shard. When translated, it means, "May the fleas of a thousand reindeer nest in your genitals."

Thanks for the links and suggestions, all!

[gewing]

"Oh, Grot!" from Quark (You must be at least 30 to remember this)
"Felgercarb" from the original Battlestar Galactica
"Shazbot" was indeed from Mork and Mindy
"Droog", "Ultra-V" from Clockwork Orange (Not really swear words, I guess)
"Tanj!" From Known Space
"Swut, "Foonting Turlingdrome", "jujuflop", from Hitchhikers Guide. And the very worst of the lot:


"Belgium"


Keith "Washing my mouth out with space soap" Curtis

My favorite is still "srizonified" (been 15 years, spelling uncertain) from Doc Smith's "masters of the vortex" more or less "descended from a thousand generations of dwellers in unflowering muck." I suspect muck was a polite translation.

Sthondat from Man Kzin iirc, "willing Slave" was good too.

[Captain Obvious]

Hammer's Slammers had "cop", which was used in the same way as the S-word. Which leads me to believe that "cop" comes from the same source as "coprophage" and "coprolite".

They had a couple of others, too, but I don't have my books handy to check.

[Nyrath]

Here's a page that lists several spelling varients:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...al_curse_words

*sigh* I did post that link already here, so you must have me ignored. Was it something I said?

[keithcurtis]

Huh? Did you say something?
Honestly, I must have read past it, looking for praise upon my bon mots and malaprops.

Hey boards! Nyrath said it first!

Keith "scooped" Curtis

[Brother Jim]

the BOHICA one is an actual military phrase









not that the "meaning" is any different mind you




man.....i miss crossgen comics.

[Lethosos]

Farg. Comes from the name of a planet named Fargnax. Lemme see if I can't retrieve the full explaination from the Creatorix Herself... here we go! (I love the Search function. )

Alright, Alright, I will tell the story of 'Farg'!

You are correct, I use 'farg' in the same way that 'frell' is used in Farscape...the creation of an alien language swear word is a very, very old tradition in Science Fiction, you know. Back during the fifities and sixties, author Zenna Henderson used to have her alien 'The People' use "Adonday Veeyah!" as a swear word, heck...in more modern times, programs like 'Alien Nation' had the Tenctonese 'Nk'Syks', Star Trek has the Klingon "Ptakh!" and...well...it is a very old tradition...and a tool, too.

A culture is defined as much by its swear words as by any other cultural artifact. Perhaps even greatly so, because what is forbidden, or nasty, tells us instantly something of the values of a given culture!

However, 'Farg' is actually a private, inside 'gag'. I could have used any word in it's place in Unicorn Jelly. It is not important to the story in itself, other than it suggests that the Gryrnese have a different, non-earthly sense of what is good and what is bad, or forbidden. Which is important because the reader must realize that the people in Unicorn Jelly have their own, unique rules and beliefs, ones that are not always expected.

So where did my placeholder word 'Farg' really come from, and what did it mean originally?

For that, we must go back to my days as a Dungeon Master, and the campaigns I ran in my own universes. One of these universes was the Gorbald Universe, a median-entropy, Mundis-like pocket universe that featured galaxies of about 100 stars, and about 50 galaxies in the entire cosmos. It was a 'recycler' style cosmos...big black hole at one 'end' that sucked in matter, and a big white hole at the other 'end' to spew out that very same matter to form new stars and galaxies. It had all kinds of details, and I have a set of handmade books that list those details, for virtually every planet in the universe. I had a lot of time back then, and I was much sharper than I am now.

Anyway, one of the many worlds in the Gorbald cosmos (which was my standard game cosmos at the time) was a little planet (all the planets were little, by that I mean about 4000 mile diameters) called 'Fargnax' which circled the stars Nexalibur, Chrysthinimee, and Velderfar. The Fargnax system was only a short jaunt from one of my most poetic inventions, 'Balocampaspe' the World Of Forgotten Dreams. Goddess, that was a cool place. Anyway, I digress...

Fargnax was home to the Fargnaxians, the Kfyll, who were a purplish biped about seven feet tall. They had dolphin-like heads on a vaguely reptillian body, six fingers arranged like a Venus-Fly Trap on each arm, writhing tendrils where eyes would normally be (these could percieve electrochemical variations in their surroundings, including moods and even distance) and a set of five eyestalks at the top of their elongated skulls that could sense four-dimensional space.

The Kfyll were super-intelligent artisans who built hyperdimensionally folded houses, and they were kind, generous, wise, and utterly without guile. Lawfull Good. Nice folks, if a bit alien on the whole.

They had one thing about them that upset my human cultures in the Gorbald universe though: how they ate.

The Kfyll raised sheep-sized animals called Glicks. A Glick looks like a bright red mass of squirming sea-anemone tenticles all wrapped up into a ball...their body is hidden inside the tendrils...and the only things that peek out of the mass of tendrils are two big floppy ears, five eyes, and a long, twin-tubed elephant-trunk with which they feed.

Now the Fargnaxian Kfyll who breed the Glicks have these dolphin-like faces, only with the 'beak' or 'snout' ending in a long, flexable trunk as well... all animal life on Fargnax follows a similar morphology, as you can imagine...its only logical.

This trunk is used to feed...on Glick fetuses. The Kfyll use their snouts to root about inside pregnant Glicks and gobble their unborn fetuses. This is how they feed, and it is natural to them. It does not harm the rapidly reproducing Glicks at all, and makes for a pretty bloodless way to get meat.

However, at the first human-Kfyll confederation banquet, there was an unfortunate incident of culture clash involving the pregnant wife of a human diplomat and the Kfyll ambassador, and well.... the Kfyll were never admitted to the local version of the 'Federation' in the Gorbald universe. Ever. Their planet was listed as forbidden, and the word 'Fargnax' became one of the worst epithets known. Dirty rotten Fargnaxian Fetus Eater. They could Detect Fetus By Smell, as a basic ability, you know.

Which is all a shame, because the Kfyll had long ago figured out the solution to issues like immortality and the elimination of all disease, as well as multiversal travel and how to achieve lasting peace and so forth.

Fargnax was oft abbriviated to simply 'farg', and so it was in my games, in my worlds, in my campaigns for many years.

In doing Unicorn Jelly, I knew I needed a proper, common swear word for folks to use. It would be too cliche to just have everyone say '****' or 'damn; or whatever all the time...a unique word can express so much, give such a feeling of otherworldliness. I remembered the poor Fargnaxians and their Glick herds, and the word that came from them. I remembered how much fun those old games were that I once ran....

So...since some word had to be used...I used 'Farg'. Happy memories for me every time any character swears.

That is the story of the word 'Farg', and where it comes from.

[keithcurtis]

Farg[ing] was also used in Johnny Dangerously. As was bastich and icehole.

Keith "Did you know your middle name's an adverb?" Curtis

[SuperKlaus]

If you count Shadowrun as sci-fi you get a delightful variety of odd curses.

"What the frag grenade is going on here?"

"Slot off!"