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Sci-fi swear words?

tkdguy

By tkdguy
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Lethosos Proficient

Lethosos

Posted
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Re: Sci-fi swear words?

 

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. :D )

 

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.

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Barwickian Proficient

Barwickian

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Re: Sci-fi swear words?

 

I seem to recall that in one of Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time books, a group of alien invaders made liberal use of the word "ferk".

 

I can't remember what it meant in their language, but it definitely wasn't a swear word - which didn't lessen the severity of their punishment whenever the robot nanny who tamed them heard them using it...

 

Gotta love Moorcock. ;)

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Fredwidge Rookie

Fredwidge

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Posted

Re: Sci-fi swear words?

 

I like inventing mines from my game's culture and then handing them to players for abuse. It helps reinforce the immersion of the game.

 

Say you're making a game in a world which was ruined by the greedy powers of federated megacorps and their full scale corporated war... The S-word could be replaced by "fedcred"... for federal credits : the currency which lead people to that dreaded apocalyptic war. I'm sure you can come out with better ones, even though it's a bit off topic. ;)

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Tiree Enthusiast

Tiree

Posted
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Re: Sci-fi swear words?

 

the BOHICA one is an actual military phrase

 

not that the "meaning" is any different mind you:D

 

man.....i miss crossgen comics.

 

True, one of my favorites from the military is SNAFU and FUBAR - oddly enough both were businesses in the same shopping center when I was growing up...

 

 

Situation Normal All F'd Up

F'd Up Beyond All Recognition

 

Now go get me some batteries for the Chem Light

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Brother Jim Community Regular

Brother Jim

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Re: Sci-fi swear words?

 

True, one of my favorites from the military is SNAFU and FUBAR - oddly enough both were businesses in the same shopping center when I was growing up...

 

 

Situation Normal All F'd Up

F'd Up Beyond All Recognition

 

Now go get me some batteries for the Chem Light

 

 

okay, but you gotta get me a bucket of steam :D :D

 

i'll see you after liberty call with those batteries, they might take all day to find :eg:

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Phil Rising Star

Phil

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Re: Sci-fi swear words?

 

Let's see... Judge Dredd (the movie) had "Holy drok!" as a curse phrase.

Major Tom :cool:

 

Judge Dredd universe actually has quite a detailed list of swearing:

Grud - God (as in Holy Grud! Grud Almighty etc.), Stomm, Spug and Drokk. I'm pretty sure there were others. The Games Workshop JD game had a list of the legal and illegal words, not sure if Mongoose's D20 version does the same.

 

I'm 99% certain that smeg derives from smegma. And I was tremendously amused by the suggestion the "blast" is a futuristic swear word, because my mother has been using this for as long as I've been alive, and that's definitely before Star Wars!

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keithcurtis Veteran

keithcurtis

Posted
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Re: Sci-fi swear words?

 

The mild vulgarism smeg is a shortened version of the word "smegma", a particularly unpleasant bodily secretion. It gained greatly increased prominence through its use as a supposedly inoffensive expletive in the British sci-fi/sit-com Red Dwarf, together with a string of derived words including "smegging", "smeghead", etc.

Some fans' theories notwithstanding, the creators of the Red Dwarf series deny that "smegma" is the etymology of the term and claim that it is an invented word. However, lexicographer Tony Thorne, in his 1990 Dictionary of Contemporary Slang (ISBN 074752856X), reports instances of "smeg" (and derivatives) being used as a term of "mild contempt and even affection" among "schoolboys, students and punks" as early as the mid-1970s – a decade or so prior to the inception of the Red Dwarf phenomenon – and claims unequivocally that the etymology of the term traces back to "smegma". Observers who can personally recall using the term "smeg" during the Punk boom of the 1970s see the Red Dwarf creators' claims as the result of either independent parallel development, selective memory, or dissembling.

 

I have seen interviews with the cast/creators where they are asked about the word and their reactions seem to indicate that the word dervied from smegma. So go fig.

 

Keith "smegologist" Curtis

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Phil Rising Star

Phil

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Re: Sci-fi swear words?

 

Age of Empires does have "Ahh' date=' smite me!" And HM Murdock of the A-Team often called BA Barracus an "ugly mudsucker."[/quote']

 

Reminds me of a spoof by British comic Harry Enfield (pseudowikipedia entry: Sketch comedian, funny in the 90s, not thereafter). At the time, the BBC used to voice over objectionable language in films, and he provided an interpretation of how they might present Goodfellas, along the lines of:

 

"You fun my wife?"

"I fun your wife!"

"Suck my cake, you cake sucker"

"Kiss my knees, muddy funster"

 

A big part of the humour being that the speech was in broad NY accent (or bad British impression thereof!) but the replaced word was provided in the crispest, 'proper' BBC English.

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Guest HeroPink!

Guest HeroPink!

Posted
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Re: Sci-fi swear words?

 

Well' date=' if we're gonna use acrostics, we might as well add [b']B[/b]end Over! Here It Comes Again! (or BOHICA, for short) From Negation

 

Uh-uh.

Bend

Over

And

Spread

Them,

Here

It

Comes

Again,

Right

Up

The

A--:hush:

 

BOASTHICARUTA

 

 

Not swearing 'zactly, but "mucker" from Stand...

Stand...

Oh no I can't remember!:stupid: I feel so BLONDE!:idjit::doi::cry:

 

 

And "simpleton" is used interestingly in A Canticle for Liebowitz.

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