IIRC, he would first turn anything that displeased him into something too horrifying to live, and then wish the abomination into the cornfield, proving that even though he was a tyrannical godlike monster, he still valued an orderly environment.
And the Star Trek writers probably can be credited with “quatloos.”
And that was a good thing, wasn’t it? Yes, it was a very good thing.
I blame Star Trek for “unphased”. “He pointed a ray gun at me but I was unphased”.
ISTM that science fiction / fantasy in general should be disqualified or at least asterisked for purposes of this thread. Of course the aliens / Hobbits / Harry Potter people use made-up words for their made-up stuff. How could it be otherwise?
Now I agree that “quatloos” had (past tense) seeped into the larger English lexicon as “arbitrary generic currency”, at least for those of us of a certain age.
But it lacked/lacks staying power precisely because we already have lots of words for currencies, both real and fake. I also suspect that if wagering in quatloos wasn’t a major plot point of that episode they’d have disappeared along with all the other currency units of all the various SF stories before and since.
YMMV of course.
Late thought: I wonder how much of this is generational = “of a certain age”. I use “quatloos” occasionally, did use “nanu nanu”, but am actively disinterested in all things Harry Potter about which my 20-something relatives gush incessantly and use words from seemingly all the time. Do they use (or even recognize) “qautloos” or “nanu nanu”?
If these things are that generational / ephemeral, have they entered the language, or only the history books?
A few terms from Doctor Who have passed into common usage, although generally in a rather specialised context. The term Tardis, for instance, is sometimes used to describe a building or location which is deceptively large on the inside that restaurant is a regular Tardis - it’s much bigger that it looks from the street.
Daleks have been used as descriptors too- sometimes as a political or humorous insult (a croaky-voiced Dalek)
or to describe some semi-automatic piece of machinery, preferably with flashing lights.
And I’m sure I’ve heard the term Cyberman used to describe people who are emotionless and robotic.
Don’t forget Checkov’s gun. It’s a phaser.
“Cylon clone” being a common and once-popular synonym from Battlestar Galactica.
Well, we have already been chided for examples that were merely popularized by a show, instead of actually made-up for the show, but I think this is an interesting example…
Bugs Bunny sarcastically referred to Yosemite Sam as “what a Nimrod.” When he did so, Nimrod was of course a Biblical reference, because Nimrod was noted to be a “mighty hunter”. However, this reference was lost on those of us who watched on Saturday Morning TV during the 70’s, and so Nimrod entered our vocabulary as “a foolish or ridiculous person”. I am not sure if younger generations still use the word in this fashion.
Bugs did however originate “What a maroon!” as a mispronunciation of moron.
Although the name Poindexter existed, the character in Felix the Cat was the origin of the its meaning of nerd.
Would that be Yosemite Sam the crazed pistol-packin’ prospector with the anger management problems, or Elmer Fudd, the hunter with the shotgun, bad aim, and general bumbling dimwittedness? Pwus a funny speech impediment.
It was Elmer who Bugs first referred to as a Nimrod, who was as noted, a mighty hunter. But it was misunderstood, and now means a fool.
— Cybots— half-cyborg, half robot.
— Aren’t cyborgs already half robot? So they’re actually three-quarters robot?
Ambrose Bierce A Devil’s Dictionary
I’m thinking Abbott and Costello could do quite a skit about which fielding position the hippogriff and esquilax play.
Not to mention “ultramaroon”, a play off moron and ultramarine.
Who first invented the word “unobtanium”? I first heard in Avatar, but from what I understand it was used in some superhero movies and comic books and probably other media before that. Wherever it’s from, it seems to have entered the language; I have seen people in car forums use it to describe an impossible to find part for an old car, for example.
Woody Allen, in one of his written pieces (Fabulous Tales and Mythical Beasts, reprinted in the collection Getting Even), wrote about The Great Roe, which had the head of a lion, and the body of a lion, but not the same lion
Since the late 1950s,[a][1] aerospace engineers have used the term “unobtainium” when referring to unusual or costly materials, or when theoretically considering a material perfect for their needs in all respects, except that it does not exist. By the 1990s, the term was in wide use, even in formal engineering papers such as “Towards unobtainium [new composite materials for space applications].”[2][3] The word unobtainium may well have been coined in the aerospace industry to refer to materials capable of withstanding the extreme temperatures expected in re-entry.[1] Aerospace engineers are frequently tempted to design aircraft which require parts with strength or resilience beyond that of currently available materials.
Later, unobtainium became an engineering term for practical materials that really exist, but are difficult to get.[4] For example, during the development of the SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, Lockheed engineers at the “Skunk Works” under Clarence “Kelly” Johnson used unobtainium as a dysphemism for titanium. Titanium allowed a higher strength-to-weight ratio at the high temperatures the Blackbird would reach, but its availability was restricted because the Soviet Union controlled its supply.[b]
Interesting. So that one wasn’t from a movie at all, then.