Future Slang

"Luckily, when we get to the future, I'll have an easy time communicating, since all I will have to do is add some meaningless techie jargon to my ordinary speech."

— Terror Island author note #181

Man-o! Slang has changed over time, and undoubtedly will change more in the future. Therefore, in the interests of verisimilitude or just to sound interesting (and absolutely lubed), writers who write stories set in The Future will include their idea of Future Slang as an attempt to (mildly) avert Eternal English. Often these will be drop-in replacements for current phrases, unless they are subject to Bilingual Bonus.

On the other hand, in more traditional Science Fiction, We Will Not Use Slang In The Future, with the characters speaking various degrees of Spock Speak.

Can misfire and sound Totally Radical.

See also Language Drift, Pardon My Klingon, Unusual Euphemism, Fantastic Slurs, Newspeak, Strange-Syntax Speaker, Leet Lingo, Techno Babble, and Hold Your Hippogriffs. No relation to New Era Speech.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Cyber Team in Akihabara: Suzume Sakurajosui thinks this trope is so very super-electric, that it is.
• Macross toys with it with the word "Deculture", originally a Zentradi swear word in Super Dimension Fortress Macross. By 2059, as shown in Macross Frontier, it's become a common enough slang word that it's even used in advertising, though the meaning has changed, probably by in-universe Memetic Mutation, to be used in positive contexts as well. The most accurate English phrase to "Deculture" would be "Oh God".

Comedy

• Eddie Izzard comments on the change in meaning of the word "Awesome". Basically, as new concepts arrive, or old ones evolve, we get new Future Slang to cope. Language Marches On.

Comic Books

• The Ballad of Halo Jones does this, so much so that some of the herdience can find it tricky to get into at first. Cheeses, though, it's worth the effort.
• In Crossed +100, he creates another future syntax. Really Movie.
• The DCU:
  • Batman: The Dark Knight Returns: Used where it doesn't shiv, but is instead nasty. Balls nasty. Mutants make an appearance in the present day in Batman Incorporated; their vernacular is still impenetrable.
  • Lobo: Lobo is prone to calling people "Fraggin' Bastiches," though the reference to actual swearing is decidedly obvious.
• Disney Adventures: An article about 20 Minutes into the Future technology (heat sensitive walls, VR videogames, etc) features a boy from the present and a girl from the future. She uses entirely futuristic slang except for "cool", which will always be cool.
• Fray, a possible future of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer universe, uses this as the logical result of Buffy Speak plus centuries of linguistic drift. To wit: Fray has an anning hab of abrevving half the words in every sent she speaks. It can be frustring to piece togeth what she's tring to comm. On top of that are the Firefly coinages, "shiny" and "rutting". Fray's world is such a Crapsack World, you wouldn't blink if Joss Whedon declared it to be Earth That Was. When Buffy gets pulled forward in time in the Season 8 comics, she remarks:
  Buffy: A "spin" is a lie. "Toy" is bad, but "spled" is good. Boy, the English language is just losing it. I should have treated it better...
• Judge Dredd features a lot of future slang — mostly swear words, such as "Drokk" and "Grudd", but other terms have been used. Pat Mills is a great fan of futuristic slang in the stories he writes for 2000AD. Unfortunately, he also feels the need to emphasize every new word he invents, (e.g. "Come on, man, we were just "baggin' bilboes"!) — as a result, the slang looks as novel to the characters as it does to the reader.
• Legion of Super-Heroes:
  • When Jim Shooter is writing it. Oh florg, someone zeezee Cos, he'll translate this zizz.
  • In '75, Cary Bates had Legion members saying "cool up" for "calm down" or "relax".
  • Bart Allen (Impulse) and other future denizens of the DC Universe throw around the word "grife", usually as a replacement for family-friendly expletives like "crap." "Oh, grife." Possibly an Interlac word, but Bart has great difficulty replacing it with any acceptable English equivalent.
  • Jim Shooter also did this when he wrote Magnus Robot Fighter and Warriors Of Plasm for Valiant Comics.
  • "Zeezee" in particular is quite clever, since it's specifically DC Universe future slang (it means to contact via communicator, and is a reference to Jimmy Olsen's signal watch).
  • Lampshade Hanging in Legion of Super-Heroes Secret Files and Origins, where a magazine interview with the Legion's financier, R.J. Brande, commented on his frequent use of "By damn". Brande said he was an old fashioned guy and didn't hold with obscenities like "grife".
  • "Grife" dates back long before Jim Shooter came back to the Legion. The use of future slang varies from writer to writer, with "grife" and "klordney" showing up in the seventies issues.
  • "Nass" and "Sprock" are two of the most commonly used slang in Legion after grife. "Sprock" is often used as a verb, whereas "Nass" is more of a noun. The phrase "bloody nass!" is commonly used.
  • Comet Queen is a sort of 31st century Valley Girl, who speaks in an even more obtuse slang that even the other characters don't really understand.
• Marvel Universe:
  • Marvel 2099 tends to use "shock" as its all-purpose swear word. Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions and Spider-Man: Edge of Time both got a lot of mileage out of this one. Spidey even lampshades it in the latter game.
  • X-Men: In the early 90s, mutants from Bishop's future (which mostly means Bishop himself, his sister Shard and Trevor Fitzroy) used "snikt!" and "bamf!" as swear words. They dropped that idea fairly quickly.
  • Appears in The Incredible Hulk: Future Imperfect, by Peter David, set one century in the future. For instance, "scan" is used as "look" or "watch". Lampshaded when Janis from the future meets present day Rick Jones:
  Janis: (Handing Rick a pass) Scan it.
  Rick: Scan it with what?
  Janis: With your eyes! Don't'cha tweak English?
• The Metabarons: Used frequently. The prefixes paleo- and bio- are frequently attached to words without any real rhyme or reason, resulting in absurd terms like "Paleo-Christ!", "bio-crap," "paleo-wedding," and even "bio-infant." Robots Tonto and Lothar attach robo- to the beginning of many words when they're referring to each other.
• Spaceman showcases a near-unreadable shorthand speak inspired by chatrooms and textmessages. "I brain i get it, lol lol lol" indeed.

Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes:
  • Spaceman Spiff uses "Zounds!" Despite its futuristic sound, this is a very old swear word (actually used quite a bit in Shakespeare) meaning "Christ's wounds!".
  • In one strip, Calvin tells his dad how he's noticed slang's tendency to evolve over time and announces his intention to use it as a way to deliberately make it harder for their two generations to communicate. Dad simply responds "Marvy. Fab. Far out."

Films — Live-Action

• All the Troubles of the World: The graduating class of adults are called "swears", because they are swearing service to The Government.
• America 3000 took this into overdrive, especially with a speech by Korvis:
  The spirit of the Prezzydent speaks! The Prezzydent is here now. Hot scan what I say! Tiara of Frisco, you'll meet the Prezzydent alone; at high sun, go to the edge of the contams. There you'll find your friend Lynka—safe, and unhurt. But if you disobey, then the Prezzydent'll cold nuke all combs, just like the Mericans and Commies! Tiara of Frisco, time's now to change your world, or end it!
• In the Russian film Asiris Nuna, based on Sergey Lukyanenko's novel Today, Mom!, the speech of the future sounds a lot like modern street slang, although even the protagonists (teenage boys from our time) have a little trouble understanding them. Strangely enough, Shidla's speech is far more normal than that of the humans.
• Featured in the 2015 scenes of Back to the Future Part II. For example, a policewoman mentions that Hilldale is "nothing but a breeding ground for tranks, lobos and zipheads". "Trank" seems to mean "drug addict", derived from "tranquilizer": the policewoman tells Jennifer "you got pretty tranked" after finding her unconscious. The future denizens also use "low-rez", possibly derived from "low resolution", as a synonym for "stupid." One of Griff's cronies calls Marty a "bojo", which might be a corruption of bozo.
• Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey has the word "station", which is both a greeting and a compliment in the vein of "excellent". Later in the film we learn it probably originated from the alien duo named Station, who use Pokémon Speak.
• In Blade Runner, Edward James Olmos' character Gaff speaks in a mixture of Spanish, French, Chinese, German, Hungarian, and Japanese. Olmos created a small dictionary of words for the so-called "City Speak".
• Children of Men had "'fugees" (refugees). "Fishes" (the militant group opposed to the mistreatment of refugees and willing to fight dirty) sounds like it should be one, but it's actually a Mythology Gag from the source novel, in which the group's counterpart references the Bible passage about two loaves and five fishes in its manifesto.
• The film of A Clockwork Orange has "Nadsat," a kind of future slang based largely on Russian (for example, one of Alex's favorite adjectives, "horrorshow," sounds a bit like Russian khorosho, "very good") ... but not as much as the book does.
• In Cloud Atlas, Sonmi's era has been hit hard by this trope. Anything that began with 'ex' now only starts with 'x', and everyday items are referred to by the brand we would most readily associate with them, only without the capital letter. Hence nikes (running shoes), sonys (computers), disneys (movies) etc. Explicitly an example of Brand Name Takeover on a global scale, as her world is run by corporations. The humans of Zachry's era developed their own future slang as well, though it's more primitive.
• The Fifth Element has the word "green" and variations of it being used as a generic positive like awesome. In the scene where the authorities are sweeping Corbin's building, one unfortunate chap flips off the cops and yells "Smoke you!" It does not end well for him.
• Gattaca used this primarily as ways to deride people born through natural conception — "godchild," "faithbirth" and so on.
• Idiocracy has a few, the most common one being "scrote", which a lot of people use as "dude". No points for guessing the origin of the word. Also, the future cops really like the term "particular individual", which has become equated with "criminal".
  • "Scrote" also happens to be a somewhat vulgar slang term in parts of England, roughly equivalent to "white trash".
• In Mad Max: Fury Road, Nux seems to use "chrome" or "shiny" as a way to say "cool" or "wonderful". There's also "half-life", a person that's been affected by radiation, and "full-life", someone who's healthy. There's also "guzzolene", continued from The Road Warrior. "Fuk-ushima" is used as a swear and the term "Kamikrazy" appears a few times in the film, as does "McFeast."
  • "Shiny" and "chrome" come from the film's V8-centered religion. They spray their faces with silver paint before committing particularly "brave" actions. Even Immortan Joe uses the terms when describing how the War Boys will enter Valhalla if they die honorably.
• Like its TV counterpart, Serenity uses a mishmash of Mandarin and cowboy slang.
• Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century: Cetus lupeedus, guys! The movie is totally lunar! An entire song whose lyrics include nothing but future slang (i.e. a bunch of unrelated scientific terms all jammed together) features at one point. Interestingly, this seems to be a feature of space culture, with the Earth scenes showing much more "ordinary" names and conversation. Interestingly, the boys on the "spay-stay" actually don't like Microbe because their lyrics make sense. Apparently, "interplanetary megastellar hydrostatic" makes perfect sense to them.

Literature

By Author:

• Larry Niven:
  • Hero Louis Wu often uses "tanj" (There Ain't No Justice) as a swear. Tanj sees widespread use throughout the Known Space stories, as do a few other unique curses; Belters in particular are fond of swearing by Finagle and Murphy, and tend to see the flatlander habit of swearing by deities as rather odd and quaint.
  • Finagle is a deity, as he is the God of Bad Luck, and his mad prophet Murphy is also part of the pantheon. He's just a joke deity, created just for cursing. "There is no God but Finagle, and Murphy is his Prophet." A logical extension of real world military slang acronyms like "SNAFU" (situation normal; all fucked up) "BOHICA" (bend over, here it comes again) and "FUBAR" (fucked up beyond all recognition.)
  • In one of the Known Space stories, Louis's father Carlos Wu was musing over two people using the word "censored". Saying "Censored" instead of a Bad Word had originally been a way of protesting and joking about censorship. But after a couple of generations, "censored" had become a bad word all by itself.
• The Lensman series is chock full of both Unusual Euphemisms and Curse of The Ancients style language, but it is unique in that its Future Slang evolves over the course of the series. Things are described as being as ferocious as Radeligian cateagles or lacking the sense of a Zabriskan fontema — but only after they have been introduced already. The series also has Future Curses involving the god Klono ("Klono's carballoy claws!" and so on) who's apparently been invented so that Lensmen can curse a blue streak without blaspheming against any genuine religious beliefs. One consistent feature is that "OK" has been replaced entirely by "QX".
• Robert A. Heinlein:
  • In The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, the hero narrates and speaks in a futuristic accent, something like Hollywood Russian. The reasoning is this is a future that ran headlong into Failed Future Forecast and the USSR was one of the main countries colonizing the moon, so the lunar society inherited a lot of Russian words and syntax. They didn't get any Chinese from the third of the moon that was colonized by the Chinese, because Hong Kong Luna is isolated from the rest of the moon, not having any tube connection to Novy Leningrad or Luna City.
  • "Grok" in Stranger in a Strange Land is a word in Martian that means, "to drink", "to live" or "to understand". Colloquially it can be better translated as "To understand something so thoroughly that the observer becomes part of the observed."
  • Heinlein put the invented word "slipstick" into his characters' mouths so frequently, a whole generation of his fans are growing up with the false idea that people who used slide rules actually called them that. (The accepted idiom, for the record, was "guessing stick".)

By Title:

• Timothy Zahn's Angel Mass uses the verb 'nurk' as the catch-all nurking expletive.
• Critic John Clute's SF novel Appleseed (nothing to do with the manga) is so dense with unexplained terminology and slang that the book is mostly known for the amount of work it takes to extract meaning from its text.
• The book The Bar Code Tattoo takes place in a future where people have barcodes tattooed on their bodies and their dialogue peppered with the phrase "final level!" to describe anything remotely awesome.
• Anthony Boucher's story Barrier has multiple kinds of future language. The first sort is that native to the future, based on English but with a few new words (most significantly "stapper" from "Gestapo" and "slanduch" from "Auslanddeutsch") and it's been "regularized" (there are no irregular verbs or articles, leading to sentences like "Article bees prime corruptor of speech"). The second is the language spoken by one of the travelers from even further in the future, who comes out with "Eeyboy taws so fuy, but I nasta. Wy cachoo nasta me?" And then there's the language spoken by the Venusian from the future, who seems to have the idea that Earth had a single unified language, so his sentences are nearly unreadable mishmashes of English, French, Latin, and who knows what else.
• Inverted in Tamora Pierce's Beka Cooper books, where there is all manner of entertaining 'past slang' not seen in the "present" Tortall Universe, like 'sarden', 'bardash', 'scummer' and 'gixie'. Most of these terms are actually English words that are just really archaic.
• Tanith Lee's Biting the Sun has a list of about 12 words of slang for the adolescent 'Jang' caste of the dystopian novel.
• Brown Girl in the Ring: "Trenton" is used as slang for "pig" in the time of 2020+, 20 Minutes in the Future from publication year of 1998.
• Bubbles in Space has a twist on this trope; it is set centuries in the future, but the author uses outdated 1930s and 1940s slang like 'skirt', 'dame', 'bangtail', and more to create the same effect as a more futuristic vocabulary.
• Bubble World has a ton of this. Friends are called friendlies, dating is linking, "de-vicious" means gorgeous or cool, "flippy" means weird, and happy juice and sleepy juice refer to drinks that make you happy or tired.
• In Bumped by Megan McCafferty, which takes place in 2036, all of the slang relates to pregnancy or reproduction. In this society, everyone over 18 is infertile, so teens are paid top dollar to be surrogate parents for rich older couples.
• A Clockwork Orange has some famous futuristic slang called Nadsat. Isn't that just horrorshow, my droogs? The slang helped convey the dystopian youth culture of Alex's society as well as provide some narrative distance between the reader and the horrible things Alex does. The Russian translation of the book, as well as one Polish edition, use English slang in place of the Nadsat.
• In David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, of which parts take place in the future, all words that begin with ex- (like expert) are written without an e (like xpert), and most objects are referred to by a known brand instead of their actual name; for example, running shoes are called "nikes".
• In Coda (2013), "tracking" is slang for listening to the Corp's music, and "choice" means something is cool.
• The favorite exclamation in Dark Life is "Glacial!", relating to the fact that the story's set in a post-Global-Warming, risen-sea future.
• In The Dispossessed, characters from the anarcho-communist world of Anarres use insults like "profiteer" and "propertarian" to mean "bastard", as they consider exploiting another person to be the most disgusting thing a human being can do.
• The futuristic slang word "cruk" was introduced in the Doctor Who spin-off novels produced by Virgin after the BBC complained of the use of "fuck" in some of the earlier novels. Strangely enough, some people preferred the word, probably due to the presence of another aggressive k.
• Ender's Game: The students at the battle school developed their own slang, though most of it doesn't apparently extend beyond its walls. Battle groups are called "toons" (short for "platoon"), rookie students are called "launchies" (as they've just recently arrived at the station via rocket launch), etc.
• In the Ender's Shadow series, it's remarked upon by one of the characters that battle school slang is slowly moving into common use. Some also appeared in Orson Scott Card's Empire, this being handwaved away by the extensive Arabic education the characters had received. Supposedly OSC pulled an Anthony Burgess for Shadows: he created the Battle School slang via the transliteration of existing, modern-day slang phrases from cultures all over the world. There used to be a page on his website explaining all the etymology, which is archived here.
• Belters in The Expanse tend to pepper their speech with phrases from multiple languages.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
  • That hoopy frood Ford Prefect sure knew where his towel was!
  • The franchise sometimes used the swear word "zark" as a replacement for "fuck", as in: "Zarking photons! That hoopy frood sure knows where his towel is!" It is likely this is a corruption of "Zarquon", a famous religious figure who appears briefly at the End of the Universe.
  • In the Secondary Phase of the radio series, we're told that "Belgium" is the universe's most offensive word. This gets briefly referenced in a Freeze-Frame Bonus in the TV series, and the whole section is reprised in the US edition of Life, the Universe and Everything, allowing them to censor the section about an award for "The Most Gratuitous Use of the Word 'Fuck' in a Serious Screenplay."
• Hive Mind (2016), being set in a Hive City where living on a higher level is more prestigious and gives nicer living arrangements, uses "high up" as a generic positive and "low down" as a mild negative. More severe negative emotions are vented with "waste it" or similar.
• Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere uses Judge and Tes, short for Judgement and Testament, as replacements for yes in their homelands, this also doubles as an easy way of knowing who is from where.
• Hoshi and the Red City Circuit: On 26th century Cassiopeia Prime, "slop" means "to tell," with a similar connotation to "spill" or "dish."
• If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe: When Dave briefly finds himself in an dark alternate future, he reads a magazine called Jawbreaker that he finds incomprehensible. From the text provided, it's clear that it's an article about smashing a man's teeth out written in an almost impenetrable layer of subculture-specific slang and jargon.
• The In Death series, set in the 2050s, uses a judicious and mostly unobtrusive amount of Future Slang. Notable examples are "mag" (possibly abbreviated from "magnificent" and roughly synonymous with "great" or "awesome") and various terms such as "iced" which are all clearly derived from "cool." Strangely enough, only the American slang is changed. British and Irish characters still use the same words and phrases.
• Spider Robinson's novel Lifehouse includes someone exploiting this trope: a conman, attempting to convince his sci-fi fan marks that he's from The Future, says such things as, "It was a total snowcrash — pardon me, ma'am, a total fuckup." Robinson studs his books with Future Slang and what can only be called Future Swears, such as "kark", or "taken slot" instead of "fucking slut". Perhaps the most hilariously inept instance of Future Slang in his works was in his short story "Serpents' Teeth", which posits that In The Future "a couple of horses" will be the commonly accepted slang for "a Dos Equis beer" (Robinson seems to have been working from the notion that "equis" — the Spanish pronunciation for the letter "X", as anyone knows who's looked at a Dos Equis label — is cognate to the Latin "equus", meaning "horse".)
• Make Us Happy: The computer-controlled utopia of Arthur Herzog's novel has "fusb" replacing all swear words. At one point the main character is banished from civilization, and he "regresses" to "polyprofanity", i.e. using more swear words than "fusb".
• The Maze Runner Trilogy is riddled with this. "Shanks," "Slinthead," "Greenie," and "Slim it" being prominent examples, with Group B being implied to have their own.
• William Gibson's Neuromancer invented a lot of new words for its cyberpunk culture, and popularized existing terms such as "cyberspace" and "hacker."
• The Night Mayor has a bunch of slang based on verbing nouns or abbreviating things that aren't usually abbreviated, as well as new euphemisms such as "remaindered" for "murdered", and an instance where Susan uses the actual phrase "Expletive deleted!" as an expletive. In one scene, Susan reflects on the ways slang has changed in the past five years — "squitch" has replaced "kink", "bove" has replaced "zooper" — and the reader never finds out what any of those words mean.
• Otherland: Tad Williams has invented quite a bit of slang for his SF novel series. He also shows different use of slang in different social classes.
• Lampshaded in Perry Rhodan, most of the main cast being immortal sometime use old Terran slang that surprise regular human of said era. The opposite happens also, when a Starship commander uses "By Rhodan!" when Rhodan himself is not far.
• The Planet Pirates series by Anne McCaffrey, Elizabeth Moon and Jody Lynn Nye has "Muhlah!" or "Mullah!" where we'd use "God!" or "Christ!" While this is clearly some sort of religious figure (there's also "Thank Muhlah!" and "Muhlah knew..."), further details are not provided. "Plasmic!" gets used once by a young boy as the equivalent of "cool!" or "awesome!"
• Widely used in The Quantum Thief and its sequel, Fractal Prince, though rather than slang, it's meant to represent new technical terminology that always pops up with new innovations. It rarely gets explicitly described, leaving the reader to deduce what a Gevulot is, what Gogols are, or how a Vir differs from a Realmscape. The matter is complicated even further by that some groups use different words for the same concept. The people of Sirr, for example, call Spimescape "Athar", and describe it in almost religious or magical terms.
• The Radix by A. A. Attanasio introduces the slang term "jooch" which means to trick, con or deceive.
• In Random Acts of Senseless Violence, the central character starts out speaking standard English. As her life (and sanity) declines, her language changes as well.
• Seven Stars: The chapter "The Dog Story", told from the viewpoint of a private detective in a cyberpunk future (the distant future year of 2026), has a lot of invented slang.
  The client had fixed the meetsite, Pall Mall. Neutral ground, equidistant from his Islington monad and her Brixton piedater. He was used to getting-about.
• Snow Crash popularized the term "avatar" for your digital representation.
• Stand on Zanzibar has "shiggies" for young women, "muckers" for people driven to mass murder by population pressure,and "AfrAms" for Blacks, from Afro-Americans (which only caught on briefly).
• Star Carrier: Deep Space has the occasional use of "'cubing" for Faster-Than-Light Travel. It's presumably a derivative of "Alcubierre Drive".
• Star Wars Legends uses a kriff-load of this karking shavit.
  • Technically the Star Wars stuff would be Past Slang as it's all a long time ago... Anyway, X-wing pilots have plenty of slang for all manner of fighters. TIE fighters are Eyeballs, Interceptors are Squints, Bombers are Dupes, and so on and so forth.
  • In addition, Star Wars has actually taken Future Slang from other series: "kark", "frell", and "frak" are all canon.
  • Star Wars: Scoundrels has an undercover Lando Calrissian talk his way out of a jam by claiming to a Black Sun boss that a particular word is Falleen^* A species of Lizard Folk, several members of which form the upper echelon of Black Sun slang for "Hutt." Once he's clear of the mess, he remarks to another character that that's the beauty of slang: you can never be sure you know all of it since it changes so fast.
• The Sten series by Alan Cole and Chris Bunch uses "clot" in almost every sense that we would use "fuck" — except for referring to the actual, literal sex act. This is actually modern-day New Orleans slang.
• In Storm Thief, the main character says "Frek" or "frekking" to describe something annoying — much like the other word it much resembles.
• In Time Scout, this is mostly averted, but at one point Margo comes to Shangri La from a semester at college with a little uptime slang that hasn't filtered through Primary. Also, the series has its own jargon regarding the time portals and time travel.
  • Also inverted with the downtime destinations. The language barrier doesn't exist in London or Denver, right? Wrong; after more than a century, the language and slang are wildly different. Or show we're told.
• Terra Ignota:
  • The Utopians use slang that sounds like it's been taken straight out of a sci-fi story instead of an actual unique language like the other Hives use. Fitting, since they're basically the world's speculative fiction nerds organized into a nation. Mycroft's favorite is "superprosthesis" for exceptionally useful tools.
  "The six [heads of state] are all at the party. Which shall I inform of your arrival?"
  "We're not here for the Alphas. We're here for you." [...] "Martin called us about these break-ins... We have questions, and I expect you to use none of the glamours you use on centrics."
  "No deceptions," I promised, translating their Utopian slang. "Never with you."
  • Society in general has developed a line of slang words surrounding their revised idea of a family unit, the bash, which does not consist of related/married people anymore, but of friends/like-minded individuals who set up their own households and rear any children they might have together. This has produced words like ba'sibs and ba'pas (siblings and parents, respectively), all based on the Japanese word for 'home', i-basho.
• The Uglies series has a totally bubbly form of this. It's so happy-making! Or completely brain-missing, depending on who you talk to.
  • The same author, in The Last Days, uses "fawesome." Constantly.
  • Westerfeld also uses a lots of Future-past slang in Leviathan, mostly to cover up swearing by the air force. Words like clart and bum-rag are used often.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Ciaphas Cain:
    • Ciaphas regularly snaps "Frak this!"
    • In Duty Calls, Zemelda, a vendor Amberley adds to her retinue, speaks in frequently-grating slang... which is lampshaded in that neither Cain nor Amberley understand half of it.
      Zemelda: (on her new job) "It beats flogging gristle pies or fly-posting for slash gigs."
      Amberley, via footnote: No, I don't know either.
    • This is further compound by Amberley's habit of explaining military and Valhallan slang throughout the whole series.
  • Gaunt's Ghosts: "Feth!" is a favored expletive of the Tanith First and Only. According to the books, Feth was a forest spirit/goddess that the men of Tanith prayed to. Feth appears to have the versatility of our own "fuck". In one particularly humorous example, most of the members of the unit, command staff included, refer to missile launchers as "Tred-fethers." Later, some of the displaced militia of Verunhive join up with the Tanith, favoring their own future slang work "Gak". It seems to have the same connotation as "shit".
  • Mechanicus-oriented things are full of this. Average citizens referring to Mechanicus, Mechanicus referring to average citizens, and inter-Mechanicus slang are rife within the universe.
    • "Cogboys", the Guard's semi-derisive name for Techpriests. If they're a liked cogboy, they'll also get a nickname (i.e. "Sparky").
    • "Cog Head" and "Gear Head" are common slang terms for a modified Mechanicus citizen (i.e. all of them).
    • "Meat-Bags" and "Fleshies" are common slang terms for an unmodified Imperial citizen among the Mechanicus.
    • In Titanicus, one of the Magos tells off a young adept for using "pissed-off". The Magos then says the term "error-shunt-abort" is more fitting; i.e.: "to be error-shunt-abort with someone"
    • Within the Mechanicus, "cog" is a compliment. It means "someone who performs necessary but unglamorous tasks without complaining".
• Alternate History Slang, technically, but Harry Turtledove's Worldwar books have teens all over the world adopt Race mannerisms, learn their Sssssnake Talk, shave their heads, and wear Body Paint instead of clothing. At least American teens also adopt the word "hot" to have the same connotation as "cool" for modern teens instead of the modern slang "hot" meaning "sexy". Sam Yeager muses that his son Jonathan, who's one of those teens, wouldn't understand him if he started using 40s or 50s slang in front of him. Interestingly, this meaning for "hot" doesn't come directly from the lizards, as they themselves don't really have slang words, but from the fact that lizards really like heat, so anything hot must be good. No lizard would ever consider the word "cool" to be good.
• The Yiddish Policemen's Union has more Alternate History slang, largely derived from several Yiddish words/phrases:
  • "Sholem," literally meaning peace, is Sitka slang for a gun, derived from the slang "piece" for gun in English as well as the name "peacemaker."
  • Also, mobile phones are called "shofars," after the traditional ram horns used to announce holidays.
  • Beat cops are called "latkes" because their flat-topped caps resemble pancakes.
  • Sitka Jews are slangily called "Icebergers" by American Jews, referencing the icy climate of Alaska and the "-berg" suffix common in Ashkenazi Jewish names.
  • Sitka Jews call American Jews "Mexicans" because they live south of the border (the Canadian border, that is).

Live-Action TV

• The first season of Babylon 5 features the expression "stroke off", in place of the current "fuck off". Presumably this refers to masturbation.
• In both versions of Battlestar Galactica, "frak" is used to replace "fuck" in every form. The polytheistic characters (the majority) also pluralize "God" i.e. "Oh, My Gods!" etc.
• Doctor Who does this from time to time.
  • In "The Sontaran Experiment", the human spacemen use a 'future English' that sounds vaguely South African, with words like 'yunnerstan?'.
  • "Paradise Towers" is a particularly ice hot example.
• Farscape, though it's not the future, is frelling full of this type of dren. Chiana's such a tralk, but everyone thinks with their mivoks around her. Isn't it the draddest? It does get a little fahrbot sometimes, and sometimes you wonder what the yotz people are talking about, but you'll get over it after an arn or two... What the hazmata am I saying!
• Firefly had a mishmash of Mandarin and cowboy slang for its future-folks.
  • Dong ma? The Chinese swearing resulted in characters calling each other "motherfucker" in perfect safety from the censors. Or sometimes more colourful terms like "explosive diarrhoea of an elephant".
  • "Shiny" is used in place of "cool". "Rutting" has replaced the word "fucking" (this is a real word, referring to animals mating). "Sly" is slang for "homosexual". "Goddamn" has been corrupted to "gorram". "Reader" is used commonly enough that it is slang for psychics.
• "Shway" from Batman Beyond is also used by Kid from the Future Nora in The Flash (2014). Several present day characters briefly pick it up from her.
• Fringe had a few uses "Alternate Universe Slang" for the series' Mirror Universe (introduced at the end of Season 2), where the technology is about a century ahead of our own.
  • A "Junior" is a $20 bill, which in this world bear the face of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • A "show-me" is a universal ID card issued by the United States government.
• An episode of The Outer Limits (1963) titled "Soldier" had a far-future soldier appear in 1960s time. A language professor is brought in to translate the soldier's gibberish, only for the professor to point out the soldier is speaking English, just faster and with some futuristic slang. When the soldier is decamped to live at the professor's house, we later see the professor's son learning the slang easily (as children pick up on slang usage more quickly than adults). The episode was written by Harlan Ellison, who has a thing about street slang.
• On Quantum Leap, which takes place in the near future, Al frequently uses "nozzle" as an insult. (Though no-one else says it, so it may be another colourful Al-ism.)
• Red Dwarf:
  • The ubiquitous "smeg", a multi-purpose expletive which appears to be perhaps the only swear word in existence in the future. And the related insult, "smeghead".
  • However, there are also numerous other futuristic insults, such as "goit", "gimboid" and "modo". Another insult used on one occasion is "gwenlan" — after Gareth Gwenlan, a TV executive who was convinced the show would fail because "sitcoms don't work without French windows".
• The Saturday Night Live sketch "The Group Hopper", as part of its parody of dystopian young-adult fiction, has characters randomly throwing around a ton of increasingly ridiculous slang.
• Star Trek
  • In the episode "The Way to Eden", a hippy-like cult uses "reach" as a synonym to "understand in a age-of-aquarius way." I reach you, man!
  • In "Where No Man Has Gone Before", Gary Mitchell mentions a Noodle Incident he had with a girl, saying "Yeah, she was nova, that one." Apparently, "nova" has some kind of slang meaning in Trek-land and, over forty years later, we still don't know what it is.

Music

• In the "Jet-Star and the Kobra Kid/Traffic Report" interlude on My Chemical Romance's Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, Doctor Death Defying talks about how two members of the Killjoys got in a "clap" with an exterminator and it went "all Costa-Rico" and they found themselves "ghosted".
  • Not to mention "109", "slaughtermatic", "Crash Queens" and "Motorbabies" all on the first track.

Pinballs

• Used all over the place in the Judge Dredd pinball, as per its source.

Tabletop Games

• BattleTech has quite a bit of in-universe slang. "Indigs" for the natives of a planet, used by planet-hopping mercenaries, for example. But the biggest example is probably the clans with unique curses: "Freebirth"; Aff and neg for yes and no, and rhetorical interrogatives quiaff and quineg, among others.
• Cyberpunk has a slew of slang terms, a lot of which filtered their way into Cyberpunk 2077 (see the Video Games folder on this page). Thankfully the game's wiki has a comprehensive list.
• When Deadlands left behind the "Weird Western" motif for more futuristic incarnations, the slang changed, as well. "Brainer," short for "no-brainer" is either "dumbass" or "dumbass without Psychic Powers", depending on who you ask. "Grape" is a derisive word for the natives of Lost Colony, the anouks who have been at war with the invading humans off and on for a few decades. "Wine" is, well, the red stuff you get when you squish a grape...
• In an interesting past-slang example, the Planescape setting for Dungeons & Dragons (And the Planescape: Torment PC game) had Planar Cant, largely derived from old English thieves' jargon and Cockney rhyming slang. There's a whole sodding dictionary of it here.
• GURPS Transhuman Space occasionally dabbles in this, sometimes to the extent that some people in the 22nd century aren't entirely certain what the slang words mean. From Teralogos News:
  '"I'm burnt and cored, and I want to tox the downlift or elf who dooped our song," said Lords of the Belt lead singer, Parallax Verge, apparently expressing anger over the theft of the piece.'
• Low-Life for Savage Worlds is filled with bizarre future-slang.
• In the 3rd edition of White Wolf game Mage: The Ascension, there is a section of commonly used slang terms that mages use - such as "Pulling a Houdini," which means convincing a Muggle that your magic was nothing more than sleight of hand.
• Magic: The Gathering used slag (and other metal related terms) in their Mirrodin expansion, which was based on an artificial plane. "Slag" and other terms (often relating to Oil, Maker, etc.) are often used in robot-related media.
  • Slag is also a real British slang word for loose woman (synonymous with slut).
  • Slag was originally used to refer to the "partially vitreous by-product of smelting ore to purify metals."
  • Also of note is "dreg", used as Nineteen Eighty-Four's "prole".
• Hoi, chummer, that fraggin' Shadowrun game employs a drek-load of this, originally as a way of sounding coarse but not actually swearing. Fourth edition retained the slang but also added in actual foul language. Various regional slangs are also implied to exist: "Ruhrdeutsch" (Ruhr valley German) is a bizarre mix of current Westphalian German, Future Slang English and Japanese.
• Traveller gives several examples of this, sometimes including whole lists. Groundhog, flatlander, and if this troper remembers, dirtsider are terms for non-spacers.
• Warhammer 40,000 features future slang that varies from world to world. One Guardsman might yell "FETH!" when something goes wrong, another prefers "Kec!", another might prefer "Emperor's blood!", and so on.

Toys

• The forest-dwelling Le-Matoran from BIONICLE have "Treespeak", a dialect similar to Newspeak, that involves merging two words together, such as "bald-land" to refer to land with no obstructions, or "tree-high", to indicate that something is as high up as the treetops.

Video Games

• Aquanox: "Light" is a commonly-used greeting in the series, probably due to the fact that it's really dark at the bottom of the ocean. Also, for some reason, Flint pronounces the name of his sub Succubus as "zoo-koo-bus" instead of "suck-cube-oos".
• The original translation for Azure Striker Gunvolt uses them as a way to keep a G rating as well as to add some spice, including "horsejitt" (bullshit).
• Actually an Alternate History slang, Zofia in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 once drops "Sweet Stalin!"
• Cyberpunk 2077 features this, natch. A few examples (the vast majority of which inherited from the original tabletop RPG) include:
  • "Badge": A police officer or similar law enforcement personnel, as indicated by their almost universally-recognized NCPD badges.
  • "Choomba": "friend." Normally shortened to "choom" or extended out to its full form "Chombatta". Originally a Neo-Afro-American slang term that spread to the rest of American society.
  • "Preem": derived from "premium." Along with being used as a shorthand for its derivative term, it is also utilized as a positive exclamation (along similar lines as "Great!" or "Awesome!")
  • "Nova": Same as above; another exclamation of approval.
  • "Klep": To steal something. The act of stealing is known as "klepping", and the one who commits the theft is a "klepper." Derived from Ancient Greek "kleptes", meaning "thief", via "kleptomaniac", someone who steals compulsively.
  • "Delta": To leave or go somewhere else. If someone says its time to "delta the fuck out", then it's time to delta the fuck out. Probably comes from rocketry, where "delta-v" is used in calculations to indicate changes in velocity.
  • "Gonk": an idiot or particularly dimwitted person.
  • "Haze": To deceive or pull the wool over one's eyes. It's a bit subtle to notice, since it can also just be seen as a somewhat unorthodox use of "hazing" like the informal ritual, but in this case, it refers more to haze like a fog or visible gas, obscuring one's senses, so to "haze" someone is to obscure your motives until it is too late for them to react.
  • "Skull Sponge": The brain, though it typically is used to refer to the brain of someone who is ignorant or dimwitted, who doesn't (or cannot) think for themselves; their brains literally "soak up" information like a sponge, but they don't do anything with it.
  • "Corpo Rat": a derisive term for someone employed by a mega-corporation, derived from an intentional bastardization of "corporate", and can be shortened to "Corpo" if the speaker wants to be (slightly) less offensive.
  • "Monochrome": another colloquial for megacorp employees, though somewhat less derisive in tone. Its terminology derives from the black and white suits typically worn by corporate office employees, in contrast to the more colourful streetwear.
  • "Eddies / Ennies": Shorthand for Euro Dollars (EDs), the primary form of currency in Night City.
  • "Joytoy": A prostitute. Joytoys who equip specialized control chips which allow clients to customize the wearer's appearance and behavior to suit their desires are called "Dolls", though either term is rarely used as an insult.
  • "Chrome": Cybernetics, though it typically refers to flashy, obvious modifications such as complete limb or even body replacements.
  • "Borg": A cyborg. While almost everyone has some level of cybernetic implantation, this term, like "chrome" above, is typically reserved for people who are more obviously augmented, often to the point of seeming more machine than person.
  • "Iron": A gun. In Night City, no one goes anywhere without some big iron on their hip.
  • "Flatlined/Zeroed": to be killed. Derived from EKG machines which, when a person is dead, will only show a Flatline and zero biometric readings.
  • "AV": "Aerodyne Vehicle" or "Aerial Vehicle"; essentially the universe's equivalent of a Flying Car.
  • "Edgerunner": literally speaking, it refers to someone who lives on the edge of society, between law and crime. However, the term is typically used in common parlance to refer to a mercenary who usually works under the employ of a "fixer" (see below) to carry out contracts. Such contracts can be anything from rescuing hostages, retrieving stolen property (or stealing it themselves) carrying out a hit, and really anything in between. Edgerunners can often work as a team for bigger jobs, but those who go their own way without a team are known as "Solos," and are often forces to be reckoned with in their own rights.
  • "Fixer": a middleman who acts as a broker between clients and edgerunner contractors. Typically they do not take part in much action themselves, but anyone with more than three brain cells to rub together in Night City know that screwing over your Fixer (or your Fixer screwing over you or your client) is a good way to get blacklisted or worse. Even the local NC gangs usually know better than to mess with fixers, as any slight against them is typically met with them siccing Edgerunners on you to make your life miserable if not end it outright.
  • "Gangoon": An amalgamation of "gangster" and "goon", typically used to refer to a member of a gang, more specifically the lower-ranking mooks and Cannon Fodder who typically carry out the grunt work within the organization, though laymen will often use it to refer to gangsters in general, regardless of rank.
  • "Huscle": hired muscle, which, as you can guess, the term is more or less the shorthand form of.
  • "Input/Output": "Boyfriend" and "Girlfriend", respectively.
  • "Ripperdoc": a street doctor/surgeon who specializes in the installation and repair of cybernetic implants. They also tend to act as a sort of Doc Sawbones to Night City citizens who cannot afford hospitalization...or would prefer not to visit a corpo hospital in the first place.
  • "Rockerboy": An indie rockstar that, as opposed to corporate-approved music stars, use their music to speak out against the ills of society and as an instrument of rebellion. Johnny Silverhand and his band, "Samurai", are the most prominent examples.
  • "Scop": crap, junk, detrius, etc. A common insult on the streets of NC is "scopmuncher" which is as insulting as it sounds. Derived from the term "single cell organic protein", an artificial foodstuff used to replicate meat that is considered Poverty Food.
  • "Cyberpsycho": a bit of a controversial term. Officially, it is meant to describe those suffering from Cyberpsychosis, which is, as the name suggests, a form of violent insanity brought about by excessive or defective cybernetics. However, in practice the media and the general public tend to attach the term to any violent assailant with cybernetics.
• Dark Forces Saga: Kyle Katarn occasionally supplements his speech with expletives like "sithspit", "grife", and "spast". Their precise meaning or etymology aren't elaborated upon, but considering what "Sith" is an anagram of, we can probably hazard a guess.
• Deus Ex had a bit of it. "Scrip" was one such word, meaning "to acquire". Also "chits", derived from "credits", the global currency in the game. It is used in the same was as one would use "quid" (pounds) or "bucks" (dollars) nowadays.
• Gothic Fantasy example: Dungeons & Dragons: Planescape (and the game Planescape: Torment) uses a lot of baroque slang, like "knight of the post" for "thief", "rattle yer bone-box" for "talk" and so on. This is, mostly, based on early 19th-century British slang (some of it more or less context-uprooted Cockney rhyming slang), making it historical rather than futuristic.
• Eternal Daughter has "roundface", used by military officials from Dungaga as a derogatory term to refer to humans.
• The Fallout series has a few of these such as "Ghoul" (humans mutated from excessive radiation) and "scavver" (short for "scavenger", a term for people who loot Pre-War buildings). "Scavanger" and its Boston shortening are seen as derogatory, so the term "Prospector" is the more polite term.
  • Set, the ghoul leader of Necropolis from the first game, is notable for having his own unique jargon that literally no other character in the entire franchise uses, which was presumably developed by himself as his attempt to create a culture for the ghouls that would differ from the "normies" (his word for unmutated humans). It's a strange mix of greaser-slang and pseudo-Biblical sermonizing, befitting his personality as a violently temperamental Jerkass who thinks far too highly of himself. For example, he uses the word "shadow" as both a synonym for spirit ("If your shadow touches Necropolis again, it will merge forever") and as a metaphor for power ("The mutants at the watershed need dirt-naps. Makes my shadow grow").
  • Interestingly enough, one future slang present in the franchise, "Chems" (meaning drugs, usually illicit ones) was initially unintentional. The word "chem" was used to replace the word "drug" in the UK version of Fallout 2 in order to Bowdlerise it, but later games ended up adopting the expression.
• Another Alternate History example: Hypnospace Outlaw, taking place in an alternate 1999, has its own versions of common internet slang, such as BWL ("bursting with laughter") instead of LOL.
• Infinite Space has "Grus", as in, "Oh, Grus! It smells like Grus in here! Hey, you worthless sack of Grus, did someone Grus you in the Grus or did you Grus yourself again?" Curiously, for a game taking place in outer space, Grus is a constellation visible from the southern hemisphere, named by those woefully unimaginative European explorers for the crane. Just imagine everyone in the universe swearin' by this guy.
• One Must Fall has bits and pieces of this, most notably "slice" as slang for "very cool".
• The final dungeon of Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army consists of the main character traveling through time, and along the way there are "time tourists", astral projections of people who just want to vid the sights. Voxing with the sightseeing teeps is a totally turvy experience. (Explanation just in case (spoilered in case anyone wants to figure it out for themselves): "Vid", to see, from "video"; "Vox", to speak, directly from Latin; "Teep", person, unknown origin (anyone know this one?); "Turvy", strange or wild, from phrase "topsy-turvy". There are others I didn't use - "Wayback" (noun), a point in time prior to one's current position or "Wayback" (verb), to move backwards in time. "Drek" and "Scrug", expletives; and so on...)
• Parodied in the Sam & Max: Freelance Police episode "Chariots of the Dogs". When done talking to Future Max, he waves broadly and says "So long! That's how we say good-bye in the future."
• Starsiege had quite a bit of slang not known in our time. In fact, cultures on different worlds developed their own unique slang to an extent, often shaped by the nature of where they live—
  • The most immediate one: "Herc," short for HERCULAN. In the previous EarthSiege games set two centuries before Starsiege, this slang was in all caps.
  • "Squik" or "squikked" is often used in place of "destroy" or "kill." "Vape" (as in vaporize) is also common.
  • Martians and Venusians each have their own word for "boys" and "girls." Martians say "boys" and "ghels," while Venusians say "kerls" and "deerns."
  • Offworlders often have slang for people from a certain planet. For Venusians, it's "Veens." For people from Titan, it's "Icegrubs." Venusians specifically call Martians "Mars bars."
  • Martians call themselves "dusters," owing to the fact that Mars is only marginally terraformed and a rather dusty place. "Dust is relentless as time," as the Martian saying goes.
  • People from Earth are called "dirtboy," "dirtghel," and "dirtborn" by Martians as an insult. Earthlings return the favor by calling Martians "dustrags."
  • Martians also use "dust" and "dusting" as general purpose profanity. (They also use it to mean killing or destroying something, like "squik.") Venusians use "sorch" and "scorching" much the same way—it's a Death World, after all.
  • Venusians have their own unique greeting: "Check your seals." Also posted as an interrogative: "You check your seals?" (Because the last thing you want on a world that's hot enough to melt lead with pressure rivaling the ocean depths is to blow a seal.)
  • Anyone working for the Great Human Empire gets derogatorily referred to as an "Imp" by colonials. Imperial Police, on the other hand, get referred to as "Imp Lice" or "Lice" by Martians.
  • In general, soldiers of the Terran Defense Force (the official name for the armed forces of the Empire as a whole, including the Imperial Police) are derogatorily called "Teddies" or "bootboys" by colonials.
  • A lot of programming and hacking terms used in this era sound textile-related. "Raveler" is used almost exclusively in place of "programmer" or "software engineer." Similarly, it's more common for hackers to be called "slicers" instead.
  • Humans have a number of slang words for the Cybrids: "'brid" being the most neutral. Then there's "glitch," "toaster," and "tin can."
• Warframe: The inhabitants of Fortuna, particularly the Ventkids, pepper their dialogue with this. Examples include "dog" (great), "klokkit" (check it out), "chek/chekchek" (get it?/got it), and "mucker" (a word that rhymes with mucker).
• The X-Universe series has "buckzoid", which is a Teladi slang for money, and one sector in Teladi territory is even named Ceo's Buckzoid. However, this is never used in dialogue, as the Teladi prefer saying profitsss/creditsss to refer to money.

Webcomics

• In the future universe of 21st Century Fox, 'Jonny Freakinouter' seems to be the single most well known and commonly used exclamation of surprise. Nearly every single character has a chance to use it at least once, say nothing of the protagonists who use it hundreds of times across the comic's lifespan.
• In Commander Kitty, "numpf" (or "numph") appears to be a common insult.
• In Cwynhild's Loom, Mars has its own unique words, often relating to its differences from Earth, i.e. "this sol" for "today" and "good sol" instead of "good day."
• Gnoph has "keck" and its derivative, "kecking", which appear to be basically equivalent to "fuck". Odd in that the latter term is used just as frequently.
• The Nemesites, a race of giant insects in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, use frass as an expletive. If you check a dictionary, frass means bug poop.
• Space-parodied in Starslip, where Future Slang is, for the most space-part, regular words with "space" added in front. "Good space heavens!" "Space-cool your space-jets!" and, space-awesomely, "I'm like a space-ninja. I can be anywhere at space-once." Also, "Forget it with walnuts." Even worse is Zillion's dialect, which would be incomprehensible enough if it didn't leave out the last words of every ^note sentence.
  • As if it wasn't fairly obvious, Word of God confirms that Zillion was a Take That! aimed at Firefly, specifically calling out one of the ending speeches of Serenity for its excessive ammounts of Future Slang.
• Terror Island uses a "tensed logic", meaning that whenever something happening in the future is discussed, the characters talk in slang based almost entirely off of disjointed computer terms. They also alliterate in flashbacks — which is supposed to be a kind of Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe.

Web Original

• Associated Space uses made-up future slang all the shebing time.
• The uses of it in Marvel's 2099 stories is parodied in Atop the Fourth Wall with 2090's Kid's totally Kleenex slang! Sewing machine! Linkara never got an answer as to what the slang means, though he did get a lesson in grammar changes over time that was oddly insightful. Oh, and "Robitussin" is the gravest insult ever devised— never say it to someone.
• I Love Bees (a Halo 2 ARG): "Flash" is used to mean "instant", "refu" means "refugee", and "ghosting" is almost entirely used in place of "spying".
• Left Foot Living Review: "Foam" seems to roughly correspond to the general mental state of the City or a subgroup, similar to zeitgeist.
• One meme lampshades this:
  Me, a cyberpunk fan in the 90s: Why do they think we'll only talk in weird slang in the future?
  Me now: Bae, spill the tea on these K-pop stans. When Tik-Tok zoomers yeet the alt-Right it's heart reaccs only.
• There's kragging tonnes on Multiverses Wiki. What a load of reck.
• Krek, steaming krek! Orion's Arm, of course, uses lots of future slang.

Western Animation

• In Adventure Time characters use math phrases and general gibberish in lieu of swears.
  • They also tend to overuse modern slang in a way that seems funny instead of stupid; for example, Bubblegum saying that the Lich can "control your bod" in an otherwise dramatic moment. Or they'll mix real with invented slang which is totes blooby.
  • There's a character who lives even further in the future named Cuber. His speech consists of even more gibberish than the show's primary standard, and he also uses the word "grayble" and any word sounding like it (such as "glayble" or "bayble" or "gleeble") a lot.
    "I'll see you trimpy flimmers on triode flimpin' the diode!"
• Batman Beyond:
  • Schway, a frequently-used compliment, may be derived from the Mandarin word shuài, meaning "handsome," "graceful," "smart" and generally cool. Alternatively, it may come from chouette (pronounced "schwett"), a French word of similar meaning. Bruce also says "schwarbage" at one point, but it's unclear if that's actual slang or just the old-fashioned Bruce disagreeing with Terry about how good a play is.
  • Also, "Twip". Its use is kind of broad (Terry's little brother, superheroes said brother doesn't like, the class nerd, etc.) so it's probably synonymous with "wimp" (weak/pathetic person) or something of the like, rather than "twerp" (small, annoying person) as one might first assume.
  • A common insult in Gotham is the literal use of "dreg", for people of perceived low rank in society. Social waste, runoff, or cast-offs. What makes it special here is its greatly increased frequency. Even the police use the term. Nothing like kicking the downtrodden and adding insult to injury.
  • There's also "slag", which carries a triple meaning: It's a slang for "kill", as in "Slag him!", kind of a "screw/fuck it" term as in "Slag it!", and can also denote that one is exhausted: "I'm slagged."
• They use "slag" as their go-to pejorative in Beast Wars, like "slag him!" to mean "kill/shoot him!" or just dropping an s-bomb when things don't go their way.
  • Eventually "slag" morphed into "scrap" and occasionally "scrud" as the go-to Cybertronian curse words in more modern series such as Transformers: Prime and Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015). This more than likely has to do with the fact that "slag" is a real-life bit of somewhat coarse British slang that wouldn't be appropriate for a kids' cartoon.
• Bionic Six had bits of this, and it was "So-lar".
• The 2D-animated Toy Story spinoff, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command seemed to include some forms of futuristic swearing, like "Aw, Craters" for terms like "Aw crap!" or "Damn it!", and "Sweet Mother of Venus" for "Sweet Mother of God!" or "Jesus Christ!". Swearing aside, Booster's occasional catchphrase "Hot Rockets!" also qualifies as some form of this trope.
• Parodied in Futurama. Old slang words (such as "axe" for ask and "X-Mas" for Christmas) have become mainstream. Amy plays the trope straight though, spluh.^note Though, in her case, the starting letters change between (and even within) episodes, making this more an example of Unusual Euphemism.
• Used by Judy Jetson in The Jetsons — where all the future slang was made up of space terminology. "Jumping Jupiter" is also common slang found in plenty of future-themed Hanna-Barbera cartoons.
• In Kim Possible Rufus' descendants started using The Tweebs' catchphrase "Hicka-bicka-boo" and "Hoo-sha" as a way of communicating.
• Mézga család Hungarian animated sitcom occasionally featured a relative from the different future who would speak New-Hungarian, which basically just shortens down every word to the first syllable, leading to odd misunderstandings. He proudly declares in one episode that he officially became a "Gaz-Em-Ber" ("gazember" is usually used as an unflattering term for corrupt individuals), as in "Gazdaság-Emelési Berendező" which is a nonsense term that roughly translates into "Economical-Inflation Organiser". On another instance, Géza asks his advice regarding the "worms in my garden" ("...féreg a kertemben") and he assumes he was saying "Félek Reggel a Kerületi Temetőben", which means "I'm afraid of (going to) the district cemetary in the morning".
• Phantom 2040 has a few slang terms derived from a rather prescient anticipation of how big the Internet would get. A common apparatus used to access information is the Integrated Cybernetic Environment, or ICE. This logically leads to 'skating' (using the net), and even 'heat source' (cracking software).
• Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo: "Hey, mom. What's the fizz?"
• How Samurai Jack got his name; when he arrived in the future he crash landed in the path of a giant crushing robot and had to fight his way out, impressing a trio of street punks that happened to be nearby. "Jack" is the equivalent of "dude" that they toss about, and the samurai takes it up as an alias in his battle against Aku.
• In one of the many futures shown on The Simpsons, "Smell you later" has replaced "Goodbye" in common usage—to the extent that "Smell you later forever" makes sense.
• Parodied on South Park in the "Go God Go" two-parter; in the future, religion has been phased out of human society, leading to turns-of-phrase like "Sciencedammit!" and "Science H. Logic!" (The general themes of these episodes is that without religion, people will just treat other ideologies as religions anyway.)
• Cody Burns in Transformers: Rescue Bots uses the expression "Noble!" the way most kids would use "Awesome!"
• It's a plot point in Young Justice (2010). In the episode "Bloodlines", time-traveler Impulse explains that "crash" is good and "mode" is the absolute worst — it's always better to "crash the mode". He also uses "meat" to refer to people he isn't impressed by. All this slang is derived from the Reach, who have conquered the Earth in the Bad Future that Impulse is here to prevent. The audience hears them use these terms during and before Impulse's premiere episode. For the Reach, crash is actually bad and mode is good.

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Ware spambots, and build high for happiness.

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