Slang

• Abbo dabbo: "space madness"; Witchspace psychosis
• Annie: an Anaconda
• Black dog: a piratical Python
• Blues: police
• Bug: Thargoid
• C-monkey: a spacer (pilot or crewman -- usually specifically human or humanoid)
• Cobby: a Cobra (usually followed by "One" or "Three", to distinguish a Cobra Mark I or a Cobra Mark III)
• Dancing the Tionisla Two-Step: deceased
• Dock-jock/Dock jockey: station dockmaster
• Doughnut: a Torus station
• Downer: a fuel leak
• Ferdy: a Fer-de-Lance
• Fuzzball: a ship surrounded by a fuzzy electrostatic corona. Commonly associated with extensive, successive E.C.M. System use.
• Hardhead: an ECM Hardened Missile
• Iron ass: a heavily shielded ship
• Jameson: an inexperienced pilot
• Lane Art: vandalised asteroids
• Kiss the stars/kiss the sun: sunskimming
• Lollipop: a flag on a flight grid scanner
• Press space, commander: see Dancing the Tionisla Two-Step above
• Quarksman: an engineer (usually highly skilled)
• Randomius Factoria: a deity invoked in The Dark Wheel and elsewhere. The god/dess of chance/luck?
• Redline a laser: to keep firing a laser until it overheats and stops functioning
• Rock-jock/Rock jockey: an asteroid miner
• Scutter: a low-grade technician
• Slim/Slim Jim: a Cobra Rapier
• Spacer: noun, generic term for a person who lives a predominantly spacebound existence, opposite to a planetbound existence.
• Sparkler: a plasma cannon
• Squawk: distress call
• Squealer: an ECM
• Sucker: a planet-dweller
• Sunshine: Quirium
• Tagalong: any ship which uses another ship's wormhole to make a witchjump to the same destination
• Witching to Reenus: to any spacer this means a hazardous fool's errand with little reward for the considerable danger.

Critique

As I've said before, I've never been a fan of posting lists of slang or jargon for things. In the case of slang words, slang is supposed to be mutable, and thus is ever changing, hence a list of it would be out of date very quickly. In addition, making a lot of slang available like this will encourage those who are "in the know" to use it a lot, and any newcomers to a community will have no idea what anyone in stalking about. Very creative, yes, but no real benefit to a community in my opinion.

(Selezen)

Links

• Fiction where you will find the slang used!
• Spacer lexicon and glossary 4 page thread from 2007
• Original source: Disembodied: on the BB, also Selezen's critique above! (2008)
• More slang: Oolite slang (2010)