Call a Rabbit a Smeerp: Difference between revisions

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

* ''[[Highschool of the Dead]]'' [[Not Using the Z Word|refuses]] to call the zombies "zombies". Instead they use "Them", and even went out of its way to imply they're two different things.

* Dandelions in ''[[Popotan]]'' are called "popotan" after the Japanese word for the flower (''tanpopo''), and the same terminology is used in the dubbed version of the series. Exactly why they are called this is never explained, although there obviously is some sort of difference compared to normal dandelions.

*** The lizards also use their own terms for certain ranks and vehicles, most of these being [[We Will Use Wiki Words in the Future|wiki-words]]: "fleetlord" means admiral, "shiplord" means captain, "killercraft" means jet fighter, "landcruiser" means tank, "troopcarrier" means APC. Interestingly, certain words they use make no sense given what we are told about them. They call their spacecraft "ships", even though they're from a [[Single Biome Planet|desert world]] with no large bodies of water and have never bothered to develop naval vessels. The word "landcruiser" implies other kinds of cruisers, except they have none. A Chinese woman is baffled by the Race's use of "ships", as their "planes-that-never-come-down" are most definitely not on water.

*** Also interesting are the lizards who learn a human language and will still insist on calling a tank a landcruiser, meaning they learn "land" and "cruiser" and jam them together instead of the equivalent term.

** Snape also has problems with the term "mind reading", and instead prefers legilimency (which is dog-latin [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|for "mind reading"]]).

** Similarly, instantaneous travel is called apparation instead of the Muggle sci-fi word "teleportation", and animated corpses are inferi, not "zombies".

* In the ''[[Tairen Soul]]'' series, several things and animals, [[Humans by Any Other Name|including humans]], are often called by other names. A ''rultshart'', for example, is roughly equivalent to a wild boar.

* Several of Jo Clayton's works use this—for example, ''chinin'', first mentioned in ''Moongather'', are clearly dogs (and explicitly identified as such in ''Changer's Moon''). However, there are also plenty of [[Horse of a Different Color|beasts of different colors]], and even the occasional [[Call a Smeerp a Rabbit|smeerp identified as a rabbit]].

* [[Eric Van Lustbader]] has the Pearl Saga where everything, even the race that seems to just be humans, has a different name. In fact, the only thing with a recognizable name seem to be dragons, which are just dragons.

* Largely averted in Gurney's [[Dinotopia]] books; flora and fauna are meticulously called by their scientific names, no matter how long those might be; it's mentioned that learning these is an essential part of a child's education. And no matter that the setting takes place before most dinosaurs were given these names. However, the trope ''is'' used with skybaxes, [[Giant Flyer]] pterosaurs who have appeared in every one to date. ''Journey To Chandra'' mentions in passing that they're Quetzalcoatlus, but people usually just call them skybaxes. They, and no others, are called by a common name. It's made odder because a larger Quetzalcoatlus subspecies showed up in a previous book and was mentioned to be ''Q. northropi''.

* In Jacqueline Susann’s ''[[Valley of the Dolls]]'', the titular “dolls” refers to a fictional slang term for the pills Neely O’Hara becomes addicted to.

* Stewart Cowley's TTA Handbooks refer to Earth as Terra and its inhabitants as Terrans, despite being set in what at the time of publication (1970s) was the near future (21st Century).

* The [[Lensmen]] refer to Earth almost uniformly as Tellus and its inhabitants as Tellurians. There are occasional slips.

* In ''[[The Firebringer Trilogy]]'', {{spoiler|horses}} are called ''daya''.

* Referenced, inverted, then subverted in ''Expendable'' by [[James Alan Gardner]]. An explorer on an uncharted Earthlike planet glimpses a small brown animal jumping into the underbrush and immediately thinks "rabbit", even though she knows it probably isn't an actual rabbit. {{spoiler|It is.}}

* In [[Mercedes Lackey]] and James Mallory's ''[[The Enduring Flame Trilogy]]'', there are shotors, which from the description sounds like they are camels.

 

** They also had their own words for time units ([[Unit Confusion|micron]], centon, yahren).

** They also once referred to "a crawlon in its web", in a context where we would refer to a spider.

* ''[[Babylon 5]]'' parodied this trope with G'Kar's discovery that Swedish meatballs from Earth were exactly like a Narn delicacy called ''breen'', and furthermore that ''every'' other known race in the galaxy has a dish ''exactly'' like it. It's one of those mysteries whose answer would drive you mad were you to learn it.

** The [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens|Vorlon]] equivalent is, in itself, a sentient species.

** Lampshaded a few times by John, when he says things like, "It'll take a few hours...I mean arns."

** The alien units are explicitly not exactly the same as their Earthican equivalents, but they're conveniently similar.

** It might not have been so much Earth and the sun as it was some other world and the sun. Science does tend to provide very specific requirements for life to exist on a particular world, so theoretically it's not impossible that these units of measurement originated from a planet in a relatively similar position to its own sun as Earth is to its own. Also from a practicality standpoint, especially once various species started getting together and space travel became a regular part of this civilization, it makes sense to find a very specific means of measuring time since you can't use the position of the sun like you would on Earth, so an approximation of the average time a planet takes to complete a circle around its sun seems like a reasonable way of measuring a year.

** With quadrotriticale at least, it was [[Mr. Exposition|explicitly noted]] that the stuff was developed up from the original grain:

** A particularly horrible visual example occurs in "The Enemy Within" where a putative alien creature is played by someone's poor dog in a costume made of orange acrylic fake fur and horns.

** One of the strangest is the "Bolian" Double Effect Principle that they developed in "their [[The Middle Ages|Middle Ages]]" which is identical to the Double Effect Principle as developed by St Thomas Aquinas and the Catholic Church during 'our'' Middle Ages.

*** Indeed, ''[[Star Wars]]'' has a least a little more justification than ''[[Star Trek]]'' in using this trope when it comes to metaphors. At least ''Star Wars'' is meant to be in its own 'verse, with no canon ties to Earth. Whereas ''Star Trek'' is meant to be our own Earth (pretty much, anyway), just centuries into the future.

* "Debbie" the Bloop in ''[[Lost in Space]]'' looks indistinguishable from a chimpanzee. The movie adaptation improved on this by making her a far more alien goggly-eyed chameleon/lemur creature with the help of [[Conspicuous CGI]].

* In ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'', the planets they visit are occasionally victim to this. The most common one is the Stargate itself, which is called everything from "The Great Circle" to a "chappa'ai", but they also use this trope on other words, including swear words every now and then.

{{quote|'''Bounty Hunter''': The System Lords think that you are a pain in the mit'ka.

* In an episode of ''[[Captain Kangaroo]]'', the Captain dreams that he is visited by aliens who need "a glunk full of gleeger" to fuel their spaceship. He tells them he has no idea where to get such a thing, but while they're there he offers them a glass of milk, and wouldn't you know it...

 

* [[Dungeons & Dragons|D&D]] is much more eager to spawn a bizarre monster, but occasionally does this for a change.

** In 4th Edition, there are monsters called the Macetail Behemoth and the Bloodspike Behemoth, which have an uncanny resemblance to an ankylosaur and a stegosaurus respectively. The 4E names may be inspired by [[Eberron]], where halflings name all dinosaurs this way. The dragons also have their own names for the dinosaurs, so every species has three different names. There's a chart in one of the books to help keep things straight.

* [http://notalwaysright.com/ix-nay-on-the-eesh-squeesh Eesh Squeesh]. Apparently they mean Onions.

* Rocky Mountain oysters. Sounds more appetizing than "testicles".

 

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[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

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