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Cool words you've learnt from videogames

Jamie John

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Jamie John

Jamie John

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Being an English teacher and that, I love me some words. What interesting words have you learnt from games?

 

From Elden Ring

 

From's games are a treasure trove of obscure words. From Elden Ring I learnt Recusant, meaning 'a person who refuses to submit to an authority', which is pretty cool.

 

I also learnt Fetish, but not in a horny way, rather as a concrete noun, meaning 'an inanimate object worshipped for its supposed magical powers or because it is considered to be inhabited by a spirit'. Awesome.

 

From Dino Crisis

 

I remember, as a young lad, being terrified and fascinated by this game, but it also containing a bevy of cool, but grisly words that were like catnip for my prepubescent brain. Playing it, I was exposed to the adjective Eviscerated for the first time, which is essentially another way of saying 'disembowelled'. After that, I tried to find a way to include 'eviscerated' in the embarrassing horror stories I wrote as a primary school child.

 

From Tinykin

 

I'd have thought that something as innocuous and ostensibly simplistic as Tinykin wouldn't have had much to teach me, but lo - such hubris! Playing it this evening, I've just come across Zinzolin for the first time, zinzolin being a dark shade of reddish purple, and it might just be my favourite word yet that I've discovered on a videogame. How mellifluous! How obscure! What a word.

 

As ever, I could go on, but what are your favourites?

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Darwock

Darwock

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I used to have this huge sentimentality and appreciation for the Bitmap Brothers game Cadaver, because I played it as a child when I was still learning lots of stuff and so I got stuck on several puzzles for what felt like years but did eventually clear it. No internet or helplines to make progress and none of my friends played it.

 

There was this one puzzle where you had to put two blue gems into a wall to open a door. I only had one blue gem and abandoned the game several times as I couldn’t find the other one. I eventually solved this puzzle when I decided to pick up a dictionary on a whim. You see, I had this spell called ‘Petrify’ which I thought meant ‘scare’, so I was always casting it on the monsters to no avail. Learned from the dictionary what it really means, and immediately had the notion to load up Cadaver and cast it on a flask of water I was carrying.

 

It turned into a blue gem because petrify really means ‘turn to stone’ you see.

 

Southlands -> Mordor.

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b00dles

b00dles

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I had no fucking clue what an auger was when I first played curse of monkey Island is the first one that springs to mind and as it came out in 97, that must have been early Internet to the rescue!

 

(As I don't remember the usual trying it in every single thing I could when I normally got stuck in a point n click and the year also meant I was 17, so not a complete child like when I played the first and I'd already used that method on the monkey wrench puzzle from the second one)

 

Edit: I realise that auger isn't remotely a "cool" word but hey- ho.

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MarkN

MarkN

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3 hours ago, Jamie John said:

 

I'd have thought that something as innocuous and ostensibly simplistic as Tinykin wouldn't have had much to teach me, but lo - such hubris! Playing it this evening, I've just come across Zinzolin for the first time,

 

Ooh! That's a beauty. And nope. I'll swear I've never seen that before. Not in thirty years of cryptic crosswords. It's not even in my dictionary, which may be a few years old, but is thick enough that you could beat someone to death with it.

 

I know because I like to know the Z-words. Zugwang is one of the the very best, not from videogames, but from Chess. A situation where having to make your move is a disadvantage. Zugzwang, delicious to say.

 

(Also a fan of zeugma. Nothing to do with games, it's when two unrelated things share the same state "when Zack died both he and his driving licence expired")

 

To get back to the actual point there are plenty from the Crusader Kings series for me, mostly about lineage. Here's one:

 

Tanistry: regarding the heir apparent to a Celtic chief, typically the most vigorous adult of his kin, elected during the chief's lifetime.

 

"Tanistry" - not quite as good as zugzwang, but still a nice word to say.

 

 

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Jamie John

Jamie John

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5 hours ago, MarkN said:

 

Ooh! That's a beauty. And nope. I'll swear I've never seen that before. Not in thirty years of cryptic crosswords. It's not even in my dictionary, which may be a few years old, but is thick enough that you could beat someone to death with it.

 

I know because I like to know the Z-words. Zugwang is one of the the very best, not from videogames, but from Chess. A situation where having to make your move is a disadvantage. Zugzwang, delicious to say.

 

(Also a fan of zeugma. Nothing to do with games, it's when two unrelated things share the same state "when Zack died both he and his driving licence expired")

 

To get back to the actual point there are plenty from the Crusader Kings series for me, mostly about lineage. Here's one:

 

Tanistry: regarding the heir apparent to a Celtic chief, typically the most vigorous adult of his kin, elected during the chief's lifetime.

 

"Tanistry" - not quite as good as zugzwang, but still a nice word to say.

 

 

 

Yes, all great words.

 

I've heard of zugzwang and zeugma - Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams both often use the latter for comic effect. Tanistry I'm also familiar with from having taught Macbeth for years and years (it's the reason why Duncan chooses his eldest son to become king after him - the crown doesn't just go straight to him by default, like in the English royal system - and also why Macbeth is allowed to become king after he offs Duncan and the two princes do a runner).

 

6 hours ago, b00dles said:

I had no fucking clue what an auger was when I first played curse of monkey Island is the first one that springs to mind and as it came out in 97, that must have been early Internet to the rescue!

 

YES! I remember that. I also had to look it up.

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Jamie John

Jamie John

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Disco Elysium is also a good source of interesting words, including suzerain, meaning 'a sovereign or state having some control over another state that is internally autonomous', and, more latterly, 'a feudal overlord'.

 

Tare is also a word I encountered for the first time in this game, which, while not cool, is still unusual in that it's a short word I'd not come across before. It means 'an allowance made for the weight of the packaging in order to determine the net weight of goods', but is used in the game to refer to the empty bottles and such that you can collect and sell.

 

I'm sure there are lots of other Disco Elysium words that I'm forgetting. I remember looking a load up while I played it.

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ZOK

ZOK

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1 hour ago, Jamie John said:

Tare is also a word I encountered for the first time in this game, which, while not cool, is still unusual in that it's a short word I'd not come across before. It means 'an allowance made for the weight of the packaging in order to determine the net weight of goods', but is used in the game to refer to the empty bottles and such that you can collect and sell.


Now that is an interesting word.

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deKay

deKay

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Weighing scales have a tare button or lever on them. I wouldn’t expect everyone to know this (although anyone who bakes should!) but I certainly wouldn’t expect to learn it from a game!

 

(oh, actually, the baby/cat weighing function of Wii Fit might)

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Qazimod

Qazimod

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I’m sure I had come across the word before, but panopticon (n. - a particular form of prison architecture, a panopticon is typically circular to allow prisoners to be easily observed) being part of general parlance in Freedom Wars was kind of unusual. In the game everyone is guilty for the crime of existing and the mission completion rewards are reductions on your sentence, so the panopticon is like a main hub of activities outside of the missions.

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MarkN

MarkN

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There's loads of great armour and weaponry in games. I think I learnt about bastard swords from games - I think it was earlier than Vagrant Story, but can't think what if it wasn't. (a bastard sword is kind of middling length - neither a short sword or a long one, but has a long handle so can be used two handed if need be).

 

Vagrant Story pulled no punches on the armour side. There's coifs and spangenhelms, cuirasses and hauberks, poleyn and jambeau, and vambraces amongst many others (the barbarian character I'm writing wants a pair of vambraces thanks to this).

I got a pointless answer on the quiz show with Cataphract after knowing it from the Total War series. I reckon Mangonel would do the same.

1 hour ago, Jamie John said:

Tare is also a word I encountered for the first time in this game, which, while not cool, is still unusual in that it's a short word I'd not come across before. It means 'an allowance made for the weight of the packaging in order to determine the net weight of goods', but is used in the game to refer to the empty bottles and such that you can collect and sell.

This came up on a TV program a couple of months ago - probably Pointless again I think, probably during a "change one letter" round. I forgot it almost immediately obviously, but yep - it's a really good one to know. (As an aside It reminds me of the e-mark symbol that is on almost everything food or drink you buy, beside the weight of what you're buying. It means it's an estimate, so if it falls a little short, you have no legal right to complain. Also means "quantité estimée" which is much nicer.) This fella (it's on almost everything you can buy in a supermarket) but I think most folk just zone it out:

 

____.png.e862980cba1a09bef7d6a5b43b6c4f2c.png

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Nick R

Nick R

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2 hours ago, MarkN said:

There's loads of great armour and weaponry in games. I think I learnt about bastard swords from games - I think it was earlier than Vagrant Story, but can't think what if it wasn't. (a bastard sword is kind of middling length - neither a short sword or a long one, but has a long handle so can be used two handed if need be).

 

Vagrant Story pulled no punches on the armour side. There's coifs and spangenhelms, cuirasses and hauberks, poleyn and jambeau, and vambraces amongst many others (the barbarian character I'm writing wants a pair of vambraces thanks to this).

 

Yes, there's definitely a few armour and weaponry terms that I'd never heard of prior to playing things like Symphony of the Night: flamberge, estoc, cuirass...

 

 

2 hours ago, deKay said:

Djinn/djinni as the original word for “genie”, pretty common use now but first came across it was a kid in one of the Shining games.

 

Another Arabic word games taught me: The Story of Thor featured a monster ally called Efreet, which is an alternative Romanisation of ifrit. (I later learned that Ifrit also turns up in the Final Fantasy games.)

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MK-1601

MK-1601

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Weirdly the first thing that springs to mind is "ginseng" (the herb/plant) from Ultima IV. And also "reagent".

 

Skitchin' on the Mega Drive is probably the first time I encountered the word "placenta".


I'm sure I've told this story on rllmuk before, but "necromancer" from the instructions of Ranarama on the Spectrum.

"Mum, what's a necromancer?" "Erm, well, it's someone who really, really likes dead bodies..." :lol:

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