Call a Rabbit a Smeerp: Difference between revisions

Line 50:

== Literature ==

* In ''[[~~Ring World~~|The Ringworld Throne]]'', [[Larry Niven]] calls some tasty rabbit-like critters "smeerps", as a reference to the [[Trope Namer]], the [[Turkey City Lexicon]].

* In ''[[Ringworld|The Ringworld Throne]]'', [[Larry Niven]] calls some tasty rabbit-like critters "smeerps", as a reference to the [[Trope Namer]], the [[Turkey City Lexicon]].

** Niven was also involved (with Jerry Pournelle and Steven Barnes) in writing ''The Legacy of Heorot,'' in which fish-like creatures swimming in the stream of a colony planet are referred to as "samlon" (much to his chagrin, it took some folks half the book to notice it wasn't "salmon"). Of course, they turn out to be rather more than that...

** In the universe of Niven's story ''[[The Magic Goes Away (novel)|The Magic Goes Away]]'', several creatures get this treatment. Unicorns, for example, are referred to as "one-horns".

Line 251:

* ''[[The Tower of Druaga]]'' and its [[The Tower of Druaga (anime)|anime spinoff]] both do this with classical dungeon-crawling enemies. Minotaurs are "Kusarakks" and Dragons are "Quokks", for example.

* In the universe of ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]'', those aquatic mammals with tusks and whiskers aren't walruses - they're "Horkers". It is borderline in that horkers aren't exactly walruses, just very similar (they have three tusks, although it's easy to miss, and in ''Bloodmoon'' they had arrow-shaped snouts), but gets highlighted by the fact that almost all the other ''almost''-like-Earth animals get to keep their Earth-analogue's name (the four-tusked fur-covered Elephantidae are mammoths, for example).

** [[The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind|Morrowind]] includes an in-universe example - Bonewalker is stated to be the Dunmer term for the category of undead generally called 'zombies' in the west (where your character came from).

** [[The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind|Morrowind]] includes an in-universe example - Bonewalker is stated to be the Dunmer term for the category of undead generally called 'zombies' in the west (where your character came from).

** In ''Oblivion'', one of the plants you can pick to use for alchemy is called "St. Jahn's Wort", presumably because Tamriel has no St. John to name St. John's Wort after.

* [[Star Fox Adventures]] uses dinosaur terminologies similar to [[The Land Before Time]], including "Earthwalkers" for Triceratops, "Snowhorns" for Wooly Mammoths, and "Red Eyes" for Tyrannosaurus.