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KD Since: May, 2009
2025-05-04 13:45:01

Rank Inflation is specifically about ratings or rewards for a quality of performance. It would only be an example of the scale were something like "D, C, B, A, Super, Mega, Ultra".

Otherwise, I'm not understanding how this would be a trope. "Super-" is a Latin-derived prefix that has been in English use for centuries. It's not a trope to use a word exactly as the dictionary defines it.

It's not that superheroes broke any rating scale, but that they have powers, and it's prudent to make clear you're not talking about, say, firefighters or paramedics, who are often considered heroes, but (usually) can't fly or shoot laser beams from their eyes.

Edited by KD
WarJay77 (Troper Knight)
2025-05-04 14:24:46

I'm not sure what you mean by "default term". Like. They're common words; doesn't mean they don't exist to denote uncommon or special phenomena, especially with "superhero" (not exact a real life thing)

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
Scorpion451 (Edited uphill both ways)
2025-05-04 19:47:33

Sci-Fi Name Buzzwords for the usage as a science-adjacent intensifier prefix

There's a vague unofficial naming convention hierarchy in science and engineering where it goes super, hyper, ultra, with the last two sometimes getting swapped or used to differentiate between meanings. (hypersonic speed is above Mach 5 or 5x supersonic speed, ultrasonic sound is intense high frequency sound)

Edited by Scorpion451
Florestan Since: May, 2015
2025-05-04 20:45:50

I guess the OP refers to how some words with the "super" prefix have lost, over time, the connotation of being truly "superior" (or somehow "amazing" or "extraordinary"), and have become ordinary words for the type of things they describe. E.g. we once had markets, then we had "super"-markets, and by now the word "supermarket" is the most common word for the ordinary grocery store, so much that the really big stores will be called "hypermarkets" or something like that. Something similar happened to the words like "superhero" or "supermodel", I guess, they have lost any connotation of exclusivity and have become extremely commonplace words in the English language. But I don't think that's really tropable; that's just how language works.

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