words that you only ever read in science fiction

Another one from MJH, from "Settling the World," the first story in Things That Never Happen:

My very first glimpse of God's Own Road awaited me; the scent of my Palaeonophis mingled deliciously what the scent of the sea

in which the unfamiliar word seems to come from an H. G. Wells story called "The Flowering of the Strange Orchid."

Remembered the word I was looking for because I found it here: http://www.catb.org/esr/sf-words/glossary.html#sophont

sophont
[From Poul Anderson's `Polesotechnic League' stories, going back at least to 1963]

An evolved biological intelligence. Implies human-level cognitive and linguistic ability but not necessarily tool use. More specific and etymologically correct than sentient. Still less common than that term, but has been used by multiple writers.

Already posted that upthread, sorry, although not the link to the glossary.

i finally finished green mars. no more pistes and escarpments for me for awhile.

I like some of his short stories and have a copy of Red Mars -they were giving the ebook a few years ago in the hope that you would read the whole series- but never managed to get too far into it.

The fourth word in this sentence, from the beginning of Jack Vance's "Mazirian the Magician": And beyond the roqual hedge the trees of the forest made a tall wall of mystery. In fact I'm still not sure what it means, I couldn't find it in any dictionary and if I google it I only get references to this exact same passage, or the suggestion Did you mean 'rorqual'?

not a word afaict (did an oed check), only thing i can think of is whether it's an invented adjectival form of 'roque':

"A form of croquet played in the United States on a court surrounded by a bank and using ten hoops and short-handled mallets."

still doesn't really make sense, but is closer than 'rorqual'. you might at a (very great) stretch replace 'the bank of a roque court' with a hedge?

Roque features heavily in Stephen King's novel The Shining. Where in the film adaptation Jack Torrance wields an axe, his weapon in the book was a roque mallet. The character Ullman tells Torrance that roque is the older, original form of the game and croquet is a "bastardized" American version. In fact, croquet is the original European game and roque is a later American variation.

but yeah, i think it's a made up word.

http://jackvance.yuku.com/topic/3599/Nuggets-kinds-specifically-Wodehouse-Vance#.WSfCTlP1A0o

gloottokoma. I've only ever seen this word used by M. John Harrison, in the Viriconium books and in an introduction to Disch's 334.

oh cool
An Unnatural Order: The Roots of Our Destruction of Nature
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1590560817
Jim Mason - 2004 - ‎Nature
He explains the Greek word gloottokoma, which refers to boxes used to lock up little children with the aim of shaping their growth for a lucrative career as circus dwarfs. The Roman Longinus wrote in the first century a d, of the practice of caging people in order to stunt their growth. Romans were known to have disfigured

Speaking of words, last night I sent a New Year's greeting to an olde pal, addressing him as "Richard Chivas Regal---he just now responded with this (30 years he waits to tell me):
...my Kraut ancestors had nothing to do with anything royal, in fact, in German "Riegel" means "bar," not a saloon, but the bar that slides in a deadbolt...By extension from that usage, "Riegel" also came to mean "chocolate bar" in German (still not making this up.) I've been considering dubbing myself "Rich Candybar" should I need another nom de plume...

"Luna"

words I only ever see in sf or sf criticism: “jonbar point.”

Jonbar usually capitalized, also known as a Jonbar Hinge.

ansible

^excellent

words invented especially for sci-fi that describe a fictional concept, tbf

(I know it from https://ansible.uk)

yeah, me too

maybe that’s another thread, for words like that and “waldo.” There’s also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansible_(software)?wprov=sfti1

"Iris" as a verb. ("The door irised open")

didn’t RAH famously come up with that?

Cranch

apparently that is a real last name but yeah.

The story also makes reference to “the wire of Eustace Cranch.”

wait, I just happen to own the Cordwainer Smith concordance, let me look in that.

which quotes this from J. J. Pierce’s intro in The Best of:

At the time Smith wrote the story in 1945, there was an abandoned shop in his neighborhood called the Little Cranch—what “cranch” meant, he had no idea—but he used the word anyway.

then adding that “cranch” is a variant of “craunch” which I see in other sources seems to be an ancestor of “crunch.” /themoreyouknow

And here I thought all along it had something to do with Lucas Cranach.

Cranch, won’t pick it up

didn’t RAH famously come up with that?

oh right the original was “dilated.” Still...

i thought iris as a verb was used early in the movie industry to describe the wipe

torus

“strato-“ as a prefix

i thought iris as a verb was used early in the movie industry to describe the wipe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_shot

"iris out" and "iris in" are usually noun phrases -- "the film ends with an iris out" -- that encourage the belief in "iris" can act as a verb with "in" or "out" as its adverb: "let's end the film by irising out"

Thanks for, um, irising in, Mark.

offworld

The f-stop aperture of cameras was known as an iris decades before sci-fi got hold of the term.
https://tubularinsights.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/f-stop-scale.gif

"as a verb"

https://img.apmcdn.org/fab975fb18fd043b3007cd9d7eb8a357e712cf50/uncropped/27c825-20110402-bob-dylan-1975.jpg
Iris, oh, Iris, you’re a mystical child

the element in a camera is anyway transferred from the anatomical region that surrounds the pupil in the eye, so-called (since 1525 via SOED) bcz it is rainbow coloured, iris being the greek goddess of the rainbow -- and "irised" did actually pre-exist (acc.SOED, i've never spotted it) as a poetic verb meaning "exhibited the characteristics of a rainbow"

so there's a quadruple meaning transference, which is fun: from name-of-a-god to colour quality to mechanism (purposive-muscular) to mechanism (purposive-mechanical) to mechanism (similar mechanism different purpose)

El show de Iris Chacon to thread!

lidar

there's a lot of lidar talk in 1491! which, okay, does read a bit like science fiction in places