Minkowskan English
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').
- 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 Sarrevan (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: The Core and Expanse. In common usage, any part of the Sphere inside the Firewall but not in the Sea of Solomon.
- Maw, the: Mara.
- 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.
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.
- 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 chemical gun.
- Frankenstein: A human ship incorporating Velan technology.
- Gyro: A small arm with self-propelled ammunition.
- Limpdrive: A first-generation jumpdrive.
- Pleasure Yacht: A high-tech Core or ZOCU ship.
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.