 Archive for the 'NerdWords' CategoryFrom the Archives: A Labor Day NerdWordSeptember 7th, 2009, 8:00 am by Jayson Peters
In honor of Labor Day, today we salute the redshirts: those thankless legions of faceless Starfleet security officers who boldly go in front of their captain … and usually pay the price. Very early in the episode. As the Klingons say: “Today is a good day to die!” Paramount image A Laurentian fixationJuly 8th, 2009, 12:01 am by Jayson PetersStar Trek and Transformers screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman seem to have a thing for someone called Laurence. Read the rest of this entry » Fans pitch a fit over lack of LAN support for ‘StarCraft II’July 1st, 2009, 1:14 pm by Jayson Peters
Gamers are furious that Blizzard Entertainment’s upcoming real-time sci-fi strategy game Starcraft II will have no LAN support. They’ve been storming the message boards to express their displeasure with the decision, and, as reported by Wired’s Game Life blog, some have even started an online petition to implore Blizzard to reconsider. Read the rest of this entry » The Queen’s English — we are not amused by silly rhymes like ‘I before E except after C’June 20th, 2009, 11:36 pm by Jayson PetersBritish educators are being told to throw out one of the most widely recognized rules in English spelling: “I before E except after C.” BBC News and The Associated Press reported this weekend on a U.K. government document that argues the rhyming device simply has too many exceptions to be worth teaching. Some experts agree, but others say it’s still broadly applicable. Every little bit helps, right? “If you change it and say we won’t have this rule, we won’t have any rules at all, then spelling, which is already terribly confusing, becomes more so,” a senior English lecturer at King’s College London told the BBC. What the esteemed language lords are forgetting is that all mnemonic devices will soon be obsolete in a world where the predictive text technology of mobile devices lets us spill our guts about meaningless crap with the barest proficiency in spelling — or vocabulary. c u l8r ‘Star Trek Online’ goes to the movies?June 15th, 2009, 3:00 pm by Jayson Peters
Basically, Star Trek Online was in production before the recent Star Trek feature film, and now game developer Cryptic/Infogrames/Atari is in the position of having to make their futuristic universe make sense when viewed in context of the galaxy-shaking events of the movie. When this happens, whether in film, comics, novels, games, what-have-you, the resolution usually involves a major cop-out, or things become so complicated as to make one wonder how anyone is supposed to have any fun anymore. Read the rest of this entry » Gaming slang could make historyMay 11th, 2009, 9:31 pm by Chris "KeL" AdamsVideo games and the Internet have already made huge impacts on modern society and all of our lives. Now it may happen in a new way. Always one of gaming’s most beloved and over-used terms, “noob” is set to become the one millionth word added to the English language. “Noob,” short for “newbie”, is a derisive name applied to anyone less skilled or experienced than yourself. Numerous media outlets are crediting the Global Language Monitor, an organization that tracks such things, with the prediction. According to the GLM, a word become officially recognized when it has been used 25,000 times or more. I’m not exactly sure how they keep track of that, but I have a sneaking suspicion that if they were to look at any number of gaming message forums, that number would be vastly exceeded already. As terrible as this is, I have to be thankful. At least it’s not “lolz“. ‘Frell,’ ‘Frak’ and beyond — the dirty words of other worldsMarch 20th, 2009, 12:01 am by Jayson Peters
Frak! Battlestar Galactica’s much-hyped final episode airs tonight. To mark this bittersweet occasion, I give you a list of 10 fake swear words that have each, to some extent, bled into the fan vernacular from science fiction. Feel free to employ any or all as the show’s grand finale can’t possibly live up to your expectations. Warning! Fake profanity and the use of people’s imagination follow! Read on at your own risk. And they are:
Labor Day NerdWord: redshirtSeptember 1st, 2008, 9:37 am by Jayson Peters
As the Klingons say: “Today is a good day to die!” Paramount image Wordsmiths make fanboy, Texas hold ‘em officialJuly 7th, 2008, 5:41 pm by Jayson Peters“New” words you’ll find in the latest edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary: fanboy (a boy who is an enthusiastic devotee of such things as comics or movies) and Texas hold ‘em (the poker game). Also making the cut: netroots (like grassroots, but online) and subprime (like the mortgage). Source: CBC News NerdWord: pwnMay 18th, 2008, 3:28 pm by Jayson Peters
To pwn: to wipe the floor with your opposition, usually in a multiplayer PC or next-gen console game. The legends behind the coining of the term pwn are many, as are the pronunciations (”own” and “pawn” being among the most popular). The story usually involves a typo of the word “own” (referring to dominance in the gaming arena), and this making its way into common usage despite — or perhaps because of — the obvious error. [Source: Urban Dictionary]
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Ah, 
Now, this one is a little tricky …
