Minkowskan English
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Dictionary
- Bath: A body of water for complete immersion, used for hygiene or recreation. See also swim.
- Becker: Person with feet.
- Cabin: The private home of a single household (equiv. 'house').
- Cone: The set of things which the speaker could have interacted with in the past or which she will be able to interact with in the future.
- Crush, The: The symptoms of spending time in gravity.
- Doctor Dystopia: A magnate ruler or other rogue leader or scientist. From popular action adventure serial Titan.
- EV: Common colloquial term. Originally more tightly defined but spreading to displace the now old-fashioned 'OK'.
- Adjective: Sufficient, ready to go, with connotations of travel, engineering or spiritual fitness, e.g. "Supplies are all loaded and repairs are complete. We're EV."
- Noun: The threshold at which something becomes EV, e.g. "What's the EV for fuel?"
- Garn: A person suffering from space sickness.
- Ground pounder: A foreigner clumsy in zero-gravity, or any oafish welldweller.
- Hitler: A Magnate.
- Island: A colony with an artificial superstructure (i.e. not an asteroid colony)
- Junk: Space junk. Identifiable mechanical remains.
- Lopez: A large asteroid.
- Nugget: A metal-rich body in space, originally some asteroids but now also wreckage distorted beyond recognition, often by plasma fire (see junk). Colloquially, a chunk of useful raw material, not necessarily physical.
- Rain: Micrometeorite impacts.
- Saz: A spacesuit. More strictly a space activity suit, so rarely used for suits for children.
- Singer: A beacon.
- Spinbound: In spin-gravity. More generally, people or things originating from spin-gravity societies.
- Spinner: Person who lives on a spin-gravity colony.
- Spun: Having difficulty adjusting to zero-g.
- Squat: A Chathamer (derog.).
- Swim: An unprotected or weakly-protected spacewalk. Still occasionally used for aquatic immersion, but this sense is archaic. See bath.
- Void Sickness: Hallucinations and stress arising from long periods of isolation in space.
- Tub: Unpowered spacecraft.
- Walk: Spacewalk.
- War, the: The Magnate War.
- Wellbound: In a gravity well. More generally, people or things originating from planetary societies.
- Welldweller: Person who lives in gravity.
- Answards: The direction opposing the standard orbital motion. Clockwise.
- Decline: The direction of decreasing inclination.
- Down: The direction from the head to the feet of the speaker. In a well, with gravity.
- Incline: The direction of increasing inclination.
- Inner Sphere: Those regions of space not in the Sea of Solomon or the Rim, i.e. the Core territories, deep Chinese arm and ZOCU.
- Maw, the: Mara.
- Sea, the: The Sea of Solomon.
- Spinwards: The direction of standard orbital motion. Anticlockwise.
- Starwards: The direction of increasing radius, especially in space.
- Up: The direction from the feet to the head of the speaker. In a well, against gravity.
- Wellwards: The direction of decreasing radius, especially in space.
Academic
- Arcanist: A person who believes that the salvation of Minkowski, the League or all humanity can be found in one or more abandoned paper projects from the 2170s.
- Glitterati: A term of wistful resentment used by Minkowskan theoengineers and hyperanthropologists to refer to their far more prestigious colleagues in the Inner Sphere.
- Hanger On: A foreign student paying for an education in a Minkowskan university. Widely regarded as pampered and not truly qualified, but also often found as the nucleus of a het.
- Het: Colloq., see 'Heterodoxy'.
- Heterodoxy: A form of social unit in Minkowskan universities. Heterodoxies, or 'hets' are small groups of students that adopt one or more contrarian or imaginative positions and attempt to defend and develop them against the weight of the orthodoxy. The hets are staunchly defended by the Technocracy as a way of counteracting ingrained conservatism, but are held in deep suspicion by the church hierarchy and the intelligence services.
Drones
- Bull: A soldier drone.
- Calf: A juvenile drone.
- Clever Girl: A hybrid soldier drone.
- Cow: A worker drone.
- Dronefire: The light of plasma (or particle) cannon fire at a distance.
- Dronefucker: An enthusiast of Velan alife (derog.).
- Dronesong: The sound of drone transmissions parsed through human comm standards.
- Dust: Velan or posthuman nanomachines.
- Egg: A drone mineral cache.
- Lance: A long-range plasma cannon.
- Nest: A hive.
- Resin: Drone cladding (nephilim armour).
- Whale: A large drone.
Military & Technology
- Baby Tether: A spin gravity section held away from the mothership on a tether.
- Barge: A ship with a one-shot FTL drive, typically used for landing actions.
- Cannon: A large electrothermal gun.
- Gyro: A smallarm with self-propelled ammunition.
- Pleasure Yacht: A high-tech Core or ZOCU ship.
- Sungun: A human-made plasma cannon.
Religion, Philosophy & Folklore
- Aphelion: The head of the Cavorite church (equiv. Pope)
- Apogee: A priest who sits on the Council of Apogees (equiv. Cardinal)
- Deva: Benevolent spirit that guides those lost in space to rescuers.
- Empyrean: The highest world, with connotations of being considered physically.
- Gremlin: Malevolent spirit that sabotages machinery.
- Heaven: The highest world.
- Nirvana: The highest world, with connotations of being considered spiritually.
- Providence: Manifestation of God's nature in the lower corrupted worlds.
Idioms
- Is it light or sound?: Is it relevant/interesting/comprehensible to everyone, or only to a single person or small group? From Apogee Deneb Mesa's (in)famous tract of the same name.