Words taken from Science Fiction
Many
words or particular meanings of words are found for the first time in writings
by science fiction writers. Like words that occur for the first time in
Shakespeare, this may simply mean that they are simply the first people to put
them in print. However in this area many words are undoubtedly invented by the
writers themselves, such as William Gibson’s ‘cyberspace’. One famous
story is that ‘grok’, invented by Robert Heinlein in 1961, appears on the
list of the most frequent 2000 words of English – because their sample
included Heinlein’s Stranger in a
Strange Land.
Airlock
1928 Doc Smith
Cyberspace
1982 William
Gibson
Dalek
1963 Terry Nation
Deep
space 1937 Doc Smith
Force
field 1931 Doc Smith
Humanoid
1940 Isaac Asimov
Hyperspace
1931 John Campbell (1909 in maths)
Offworld
1957 Andre
Norton
Parallel
universe 1923 H.G
Wells
Planet
Earth 1941 Comet
magazine
Robot
1923 Karel
Capek
Time
machine 1895 H.G. Wells
Space
warp 1935 N.
Schachner
Spaceman
1933 C.L. Moore
Spaceworthy
1931 Doc Smith
Starbase
1944 R.M. Williams
Starship
1934 F. Kelly
Subspace
1940 A.E. van Vogt
Superhero
1942 Superspine comics
Teleportation
1951 John Wyndham
Terraform
1942 Jack Williamson
Blast
off 1937 Doc Smith
Vacuum
suit 1947 N Schachner
Venusian
1874 Anne Blair
Waldo
1942 Robert Heinlein
Source: mostly OED Science
Fiction citations
Forming new words Shakespeare's words
English names for foreign places