SF is rich with opportunities to create new phrases and words that sound really cool.

I use the word-

Technoloog - imagined future tech that is nothing more than a single word/ phrase that sounds cool... eg 'flux capacitor' from Back to the Future or something like 'psi-chaon particle reverberator turbines'... stuff like that...

'loog' is corruption of logos.

It'd be really nice if we posted such imaginary words/phrases with a short explanation.

You mikght want to get a hold of a copy of Brave New Words: the Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, 2007, ed. Jeff Prucher. A favorite of mine is phlogiston.

re: phlogiston

oh, right.. as in that wonderful sf writer Joe Priestly, "Mr. Lavoisier is well known to maintain, that there is no such thing as what has been called phlogiston." (Philos. Trans., 1785)

I like Asimov's thiotimoline..

"The result was that I wrote a pseudo-dissertation [in 1948]
written as stodgily as I could manage about a compound
which dissolved 1.12 seconds before you added the water.
I called it The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated
Thiotimoline."
- Isaac Asimov, I.Asimov: A Memoir (1994)

"It can only be initiated in my continuum, because the
molecules of the activating substance, thiotimoline,
have different properties when they're reversed."
- Spider Robinson, Time Travelers Strictly Cash (1981)

"Phlogiston"...Great word. But it refers to an actual chemistry theory that was once around to explain fire/oxidation...


Phlogiston Theory

as in that wonderful sf writer Joe Priestly

I was thinking more of that great skiffy writer, J. J. Becher (link). He was also a conlanger, viz. Character pro notitia linguarum universali.

You and I have differing opinions about when science fiction began as a genre. I trace it back at least to Lucian's True History (2nd century CE, Αληθη Διηγηματα). A wee bit before Azimov's time.

But it refers to an actual chemistry theory that was once around to explain fire/oxidation

I read it used jocularly in at least one skiffy book. (I'll try to round up the citation.)

But since you and tsuwm are such purists, I offer waldo from 20th century scientifiction. It's now a real word denoting a real thing.

aside, re: sf.. scifi.. skiffy.. scientifiction

what do you make of the scifi channel changing their logo to SYFY?
8-P

Phlogiston features in the science fiction short story "... The World, As We Know't" by Howard Waldrop (link)

Great words have been invented, I know...
One of my faves is "Sophont" which is kind of a synonym for 'sentient/sapient' referring to intelligent life forms

... link to a nice site with this wordSophont

Try inventing some original Techloog... heres one from my side-

Necrovault- A chamber for long term cryogenic freezing, as on spaceships performing journeys for long periods.

Edit- Site for some of the best technoloog around...

75 words every sf fan should know ... waldo's on this list

How about stereobatic semiosis, sometimes mislabeled foundational semantogenesis? It's a term from diachronic xenolinguistics which refers to a stage in the development of language in which meaning proceeds signification. Roughly when a concept exists before a word for it does.

Not to spoil someone's fun ( I hate to do that) but we use technoloog as a common word.
link

"stereobatic semiosis"... lolz, very rich!

try an antonym for that... ie when a word exists before the concept does...

Re BranShea

Looks German... what does it mean?

Technologist.

when a word exists before the concept does

Nephelococcygial semiosis, or cloud-cuckoo-landish symbologenesis.

Okay... I'll change mine to Pseuteclog

Pseudo-Technological-Words

There was always Asimov's psychohistory. A more recent addition would be cliology from Michael Flynn's works In the Country of the Blind[i] and [i]Eifelheim. Googling it makes an study and I'm not sure if Flynn coined it or if he co-opted an existing word (and discipline). To me psychohistory was more of an engineering discipline and cliology observational.

what do you make of the scifi channel changing their logo to SYFY? Surprisingly, I like it; it's a much better phonological replication than sci-fi...which I would never have equated with skiffy.
Come to think of it, why wasn't sci-fi pronounced as sigh-fee or sigh-fih? Just the rhyme?

Welcome aBoard, Fieldgunner. I'm guessing you're a U.S.'n?

>Come to think of it, why wasn't sci-fi pronounced as sigh-fee or sigh-fih?

well, I (for one) always pronounced it as sigh-figh; and I think that SyFy just obviousizes it for those who haven't been uplifted.

thanks jackie... your guess is a bit off though.i'm from india.

isnt asimov also credited with coining 'robotics' before there was such an industry?

indeed... but it really wouldnt count as a new word, just an extension of 'robot' which of course is from Karel Capeks Czech Play RUR, the word meaning 'serf'/'slave'.

R.U.R. (‘Rossum's Universal Robots’) (1920)
-ron o.

Also, its been quite some time since I heard anyone insist that 'Robot' be pronounced correctly with the 't' silent, rather than as 'Roh-Baht'... i guess we have Hollywood to credit for that...

anyone who knows anything about robots already knows that but the parameters of this discussion were as follws:

"a word exists before the concept does"

the word "robotics" existed before the concept of robotics did in just the same way that the words artificial and satellite existed as words before Clarke put them together to describe a concept that did not exist when he coined the phrase.

I am also confused by this "Correctly"? By whose fiat? I do not speak czech and feel no obligation to try to pronounce the English word 'robot' as if it were the czech word from which it was derived any more than I feel obliged to pronounce yacht as if it were the dutch word from which it was derived. Defining 'correctly' as "common in standard variants" the robot does not have a silent "t" in English and since it is now an English word that is enough for me.

Re 1... the word exists before the concept does.

That was just an aside in the discussion, my friend... actually the discussion is about inventing new words/phrases inspired by science fiction. Though most of us here are actually just putting up words that have already been used, I started the thread with the hope of hearing some original ones.

Re2...Pronunciation of 'Robot'.

I apologise if it seems to you that i can somehow, over the internet, 'oblige' you to speak the word in a certain way, thus inhibiting your freedom of choice...duh!
You are right, of course. In english, the word does have the 't' audible. I stand corrected.

Back on topic-

Psyron- massless, weightless, chargeless particle which travels faster than light and bends time-space in its path as it travels carrying information between telepaths. Also shows wavelike properties and thus...Psyflux- roughly, brainwaves.

robot

From the Czech word robota 'servitude' < rab slave'. Our word slave is from the (Latin) ethnonym Sclavus Slav' (cf. Russian слава, slava, 'fame', слово, slovo, 'word') < PIE *kleu- 'to hear'. And serf is from latin servus 'slave, servant'

silent t

I have never heard this, but it makes no sense at all. The word robot is a borrowing of the Czech word robota in which the t is pronounced. Besides androids and automata, there was the medieval Jewish story of the Golem (Yiddish goylem) created by Rabbi Loew of Prague. In French, robot is pronounced without voicing the t, but as the play R.U.R. was translated from the Czech (by Paul Sever who also translated The Good Soldier Švejk) and not the French, I cannot see how this has any bearing on the English pronunciation.

Psyron 0bvious

tsuwm?

you rong?

Eye-wrung fluttered by.

It is gratifying to know thta I was not the only one who thought this way.

Speaking of new words

http://wordsmith.org/board/ubbthreads.php/topics/185767/New_words_in_Webster_s_Collegi#Post185767

zm, forgive me but doesn't a condition or concept almost always exist before the word for it

I was in about fourth grade when I read it aloud as "robo" whereupon our teacher corrected me with utter certainty. But I when looked it up in the appendix of the very schoolbook in which the phrase was used--I think it was on geography--much to her surprise it was indeed given as "robo"

much to her surprise it was indeed given as "robo"

That explains a lot, dahil. You're French. But, seriously, unless you can find this schoolbook (perhaps on Google books, link) I'll stick with what I've heard.

doesn't a condition or concept almost always exist before the word for it

I'm not sure, even for human languages, but they would never have coined the term in xenolinguistics (link) if they hadn't needed it. But, seriously, dahil, if I run across a word I've never seen or used before, then the word does precede the concept. Also, if the word changes in meaning, then it precedes its (newer) concept.

Quite often something new is developed and existing words are used to refer to it before it gets a word of its own. One example might be the horseless carriage. In other cases existing words might be used to refer to something and the old word might stick around, such as a recording.

Stick with it zm: That was 70 years ago and I would suppose the tome is long out of print

I do in fact have a bit of French blood but it's the German in me which recalls technicalities such as arose that day in class

Schoolbooks are often wrong. I've always heard it as ROW BOT' or less often as ROW' BUTT. When my spawn were much younger, we read aloud RUR and others of Capek's plays amongst ourselves. It's an interesting read - IIRC, humanity is destroyed and replaced by its creations who develop human emotions.

But it's not French blood Fieldgunner (hello Fg ) was looking for, Dale. It's Camiroïan blood he's been after. And bellotas nuts. I only saw Robo without the t in Robocop.

You and I have differing opinions about when science fiction began as a genre. I trace it back at least to Lucian's True History (2nd century CE, &#913;&#955;&#951;&#952;&#951; &#916;&#953;&#951;&#947;&#951;&#956;&#945;&#964;&#945;). A wee bit before Azimov's time.

I'd like to hear more if you don't mind. I'm of the mind that Sci-fi is at least definable by the Science and Technology of the contemporary era. I haven't read 'True story' but would now like to. from what I've gleaned from online sources, it seems to bend toward the fantasy genre a tad bit. But, I dunno!

Dale, if you would edit your post (#185940) to delete the end of the link so that you leave only http://wordsmith.org/board/ubbthreads.php/topics/185767, it will still take us to the page but will also reduce this thread so it's not w-i-d-e any more. I hope. Thanks.

I'd like to hear more if you don't mind.

It's been just over thirty years since I read parts of it for a classics class in college, but I found an English translation online at Gutenberg (link). If you want we can both read it and discuss.

Recently I heard an audio file on the onion website in which the word was consistently pronounced ROE BIT. The OED has only ({sm}r{schwa}{shtu}b{rfa}t) and no mention of an alternate pronunciation with a silent t. Nor does Merriam-Webster and googling for 'robot pronunciation silent t' turns up only this thread as mentioning the existence of such a variant.

I got just one question:

Huh?

sorry. I copied and pasted the pronunciation entry and that was how it came out. It lookes like this:

If you want we can both read it and discuss.

Ta! I'll let you know when I've finished.

I'd like to hear more too! Love Sci Fi.

I HATE IT!!!! It looks like "siffy" to me. YUK!!!!

And just because I've always wondered: I know a "tesseract" is a "real" thing, but does anybody "get it"? It's so weird!

I HATE IT!!!! It looks like "siffy" to me. YUK!!!!

Sifffy. Hmm. I like it. It rolls right off the tongue into the mud puddle below. Syfy on the other hand I would pronounce as ßűḟů.

ß&#369;&#7711;&#367; I would pronounce as "bufu"... ;0)

So how would you pronounce the name "Sydney"? The one I know says "sid nee", not "side nee". That's why it looks like "siffy" to me...

So how would you pronounce the name "Sydney"?

Sir Philip Bleeding is how I pronounce it.

And I pronounce Syfy as ßűḟů, with the first grapheme pronounced as the the ß in German Straße 'street', the second one as the ű in Hungarian tűz /tyːz/ 'fire', the third one as the f in Japanese 富士山 fujisan /ɸɯꜜdʑisaɴ/ 'Mt Fuji', and the final one as the ů in Czech nůž /nuːʃ/ 'knife; shiv'.

Hmm... seeing this #@65%()##_(&^$94 I think I'll just say : "Sinny"

What you have there is two-space projections of three-space projections of four-space objects. Back in the day we made a three-space projection of a tesseract.

a tesseract is a Wrinkle in Time!!
-ron o.

That is too funny! I copied and pasted Z's word, which looked fine when I did it, but apparently wasn't fine after the "postmaster" got done with it!

That's not my word, I never use language like that. [polishing tarnished halo-e]

What I meant to post here was:
Back to SciFi (which incidentally I remember hearing as SciFic somewhere in my distant past) words. It always amused me to see what was invented as swearing; frac, smeg and the like.

On a tangent, does anyone remember the Tom Swift series. No invention of new words there. They just prefixed everything with space. "Look Tom, the space explosion of space fuel turned that space rock into space dust!!!" Yeesh.

But twosleepy, that is a beautiful thing! This tesseract.


Yes, that how we used to make our space trip as kids. No fancy words, just rock solid space dust. And catering in the space craft was just "longlife" pills . Crashes were survived by "longlife" pills. Right, as food it was really boring.

Kia ora Z,
I'm still not convinced of Lucians intent. He states in his intro,

Accordingly I hereby declare, that I sit down to relate what never befell me ; what I neither saw myself, nor heard by report from others ; aye, what is more, about matters that not only are not, but never will be, because in one word, they are absolutely impossible, and to which therefore I warn my readers (if by the by I should have any) not to give even the smallest degree of credit.

After having read the tale I had trouble fathoming whether even the science of the day would find any room for plausibility. It was a great read though, I loved the enormous scale and sense of wonderment he created. Maybe if his ship had wings, that would sway me. I do feel privilleged for having read it. A good yarn.

But hey, mine ain't the be all and end all of what skiffy is and what it is'nt.