User:Soap/gumption

See also Orphaned languages of Teppala.

GUMPTION words are a catch-all term for a word with a very specific meaning not recoverable from its etymology. They are fairly common in Play, but especially well-known in Late Andanese. Because of a longstanding mutual respect for each other's distinct cultures and languages, Play and Andanese seldom borrow words from each other, but instead use calques or coin new words. This holds true even for speakers who are fluent in both languages, because all citizens belonged to only one tribe, even if they were fluent in both languages or in a mixed marriage. Thus, many gumption words are pairs, but it is most often Andanese that coined the word first.

This section is very disorganized because the terms in each section also share traits with terms in other sections, and as a result all of them are difficult to categorize.

Play and Andanese often translate doubly foreign words (that is, words that are foreign to both languages) through a cipher rather than attempting to represent the complex sounds of various languages like Leaper.

Type I Gumption words (culturebound)

These terms are considered culturebound, even if they are not. There is a much larger number of terms that are also culturebound because of politics, but typically have short lifetimes. Examples of longer-lived words follow:

Champions

• Play's "champion" word, kapipāsuaa, or something even more specific, referring to an all-around champion who is fond of competing in one particular sport (or other competition) but is so good in general that they can beat others at their own favorite sports.

Taapau

• Play taapau, often considered an ideal masculine trait; may have various definitions even inside Play because of different men having different ideas of what it means to be taapau. The overarching concept is to be helpful to others without taking criticism from those who are being helped. Possible finer shades of meaning follow:

• "utilitarian and ugly", which is one interpretation of the bare word taapau rather than a compound based on it. Note that taapau is an AA compound, not BB as one might expect. The Play and especially Andanese scripts were considered very taapau, and even feminists took pride in this despite their conscious acknowledgment that the scripts were masculine. These women subscribed to a type of feminism in which men were not seen as harmful or inferior, but were considered expendable in times of scarcity, and so the taapau ideal served them well.
• A restaurant following taapau ideals might have cheaper prices than all of their competitors, but make no apologies if they ran out of food early in the day, since they would consider themselves to be helping the community rather than operating for profit.

Child superheros

There is a word for a child superhero, literal or metaphorical, particularly one whose behavior is more stereotypically adult-like than that of most adults. Play's word is žafaa, inherited directly from the Gold ancestor gahʷaʕ, which had a broader meaning in Gold. The Gold word is in turn from MRCA ìka mfʷògo, showing it was originally a compound. The earlier MRCA word mfʷògo was itself originally a compound (note that /mfʷògo/ is not a legitimate atomic word shape, even when /g/ comes from earlier /B/) that had been formed shortly after the breakup of the language. The full phrase ìka mfʷògo does not occur in Dreamlandic, although mfʷògo could.

The word žafaa is not part of the žai- wordset; the minimal morpheme in that set is /žai/, even if sound changes have worn down some of the /i/'s.

Ideal characteristics

1. The žafaa typically does not talk about being young; they set about their mission with a clear view because it is the only life they know. Adults around them understand this and likewise do not make constant remarks about the situation being unfair.
2. The žafaa does not trust unknown adults, but always trusts children their own age and younger, even those whose families are on the opposite side of an ongoing war. Their view of their parents may vary; the žafaa is often an orphan or runaway and may have no positive adult role models at all.
3. The žafaa understands the importance of school but may not have any free time in which to attend. (See Where will be go?)

žayuunaum

Other languages also retained cognates of mfʷògo. The concept as it evolved in languages such as Leaper was comparable to the Play cipher term pušeže, a term with no native Play equivalent that only appeared when Players began ciphering words from other languages instead of using loans.

The difference between a žafaa and a pušeže is difficult to explain, but the Players believed that their concept of a child superhero honored the child's contributions whereas the foreigners' concept made the child seem little more than a toy, one whose struggles are a source of amusement for the adults around them. Whereas the žafaa and the adults around them viewed the hero's age as irrelevant or at most of minor importance, the pušeže was thrust into the role of hero precisely because they were a child, and on their missions they were constantly reminded of this. Yet, the Players and other Play speakers had no great tradition of adult superheros; whether there was actually a difference between the cultural viewpoints is a matter of opinion.

A native Play equivalent for this word could be žayuunaum, one who is tunaum to žai. Here, tunaum is a native Play word describing someone who is repeatedly humiliated in the exact same way, over and over, whose bullies see no need to ever use any other trick. Since a young child cannot quickly grow up, a young child forced into a situation where all their opponents are adults is a tunaum. However, the Play word tunaum by itself says nothing about whether the victim of bullying is a child surrounded by adults or someone who is incurably weak in a different way. The addition of žai brings this word into the žai family, describing physical hardiness, strongly valued in Play-speaking cultures, that some believe can only be attained by experience while others believe it is inborn. Although this still does not specify that the holder of the title is a child, the Players culturally associate this type of weak person with the sort of cultures that would put children against adults and therefore the semantic match need not be exact.

Note that Play's word for age, papa, also means "scar", so a literal meaning is difficult to construct.

Consider Calvin & Hobbes Jun 4 1987 strip as an example of žayuunaum. also the very similar Feb 13 1990

pointers

Yet another type of child superhero known to the Leapers but foreign to the Players and Andanese was the pointer, named for adults' promise to believe anything the child said about someone they pointed out with their hand. Play translated this as činuaā but did not believe in their authority. This is related to the "alarm" concept below.

(Note: more words applying to all sections on this page can be found in the GUD dictionary, intended for a draft of Andanese in which such word formation is normal although the words are compounds.)

Where will be go?

Though originating outside Play culture, Players and other Play speakers who believed in žafaa most often claimed that a žafaa would seek out education on their own rather than being forced against their will into school. They remembered a long-ago anecdote about a group of 5-year-olds who walked to their school, and upon finding it closed, walked three miles through the woods to a neighboring school so they could finish their classwork. (One girl had said (with the error translated into English) "Where will be go?")

pipiapabape

This describes someone whose suffering is not merely undeserving of compassion, but seen as cute by other people, a source of amusement. This is similar to the mocked child superhero above, but is used to describe adults who are incapable of bringing harm to anyone else, whether as revenge for their misfortune or by dragging others into the situation.

People describing a pipiapabape will often use words falsely suggestive of sympathy, but in reality they are mocking the person and would consider even the worst things that happen to the pipiapabape to be funny.

As above, this is not a Play word, not even in a cipher. Nonetheless, the Play word žayuunaum might translate it well, so long as the cultural context is removed so that it doesn't contrast primarily with žafaa. Since Play žayuunaum refers to a type of child superhero that the Players did not believe existed, the Players would not normally use it as an insult even against their worst enemies such as the Dreamers.

Butterfly

• "go back to the only place i have left" (the gumption word would be "one's own refuge" as in the word for butterfly. in Play this is an ordinary content word, but in other languages it might need to be named after a person, or alternatively just calqued from Play using the borrowing language's own word for butterfly)

• This is often used by people at the bottom of society, but whose sole comfort — a safe place to live — seems to never be in jeopardy. For example, one among a group of people forced to live in the wilderness would say they were going back to the campsite using the butterfly verb. Because these people are otherwise very poor and troubled, their sole refuge is very important to them, and the name of the safe place might be considered even more comforting than the Play word for home (nuīs).

I only want what is real

Many Butterflies, if adopted into a wealthier society, have trouble adjusting and some even prefer to return to living in the wilderness at least periodically. Some reasons for this are:

1. They have seen comforting things disappear in the past, and worry that it will soon happen again. They prefer to be poor but safe instead of rich and forever in fear. A modern analogy would be a person taken in from the wild, and given a new home, who refused to use appliances or even electricity for fear that they would malfunction or be taken away. "Even the toilet scares me"
2. They have adapted to the wild life so much that they actually prefer it, even aside from the concerns about things disappeaning. "Sesame Street bought Oscar a mansion, but when he moved in, he just lived in the kitchen trash barrel."

The city without work

• a city in which nobody works or goes to school, and people are poor but all needs are nonetheless taken care of. Not the same as the butterfly refuge above, because the butterfly habitat is real, and only provides one thing (shelter) without providing food and well-being.

• The Play name for this city was Ŋapata Ŋūa, where ŋūa means to make a toy of something and is also used in words related to child care. Thus Ŋapata Ŋūa was a city where everyone was like small children, even younger than the youngest school-age children, and yet their needs were taken care of.
• The Late Andanese name for the city is Upuayaha. This has no connection to the Play name because both cultures shared the concept and neither needed to loan its name from the other.
• Although this is not the same as the butterfly habitat, some common bonds unite them.

• For example, both places are described as materially poor, yet in at least one way better off than the richer society around them.
• People living in both places may have only a narrow connection to the outside world, such that they don't conceive of their own living situation as extreme, but instead see the outside world as exotic. A common item from the outside world might be treated as a treasure in Ŋapata Ŋūa, but not as an item of temptation; it would thus be then quickly discarded as something not worth seeking more of.

• Both Play and Andanese speakers agree that the city has a definite location in Play territory, but would be reluctant to place it on a map.
• There are similarities to the Big Rock Candy Mountain song, in that the pleasures never run out, but also are limited to individualistic elemental pleasures rather than pleasure derived from monetary wealth or from exploitation of other people. Not everyone would be happy in Upuayaha, but those who live there are glad to have found their paradise and have no desire to leave. Note that the Players and their forebearers specifically defined pata "play" as being fun for all involved, and with no one suffering to provide another with pleasure.

Frog Pond

• A state of mental clarity which brings perfect peace. Commonly believed to be a physical place, even by adults who have studied their religion.

Type II Gumption words (painful emotions)

Play and Andanese both share a trait where the word for emotion also includes reflexive verbs such as "sleep", and therefore their class of emotions is very broad. These words, nonetheless, are emotions in the same sense as used in English.

Waiting and wishing

Some saying "are you still waiting for ___", either

• said to comfort someone when the person/thing clearly will never arrive, or
• pretending not to notice something is wrong, so that the listener can realize the problem without the visible embarrassment of being confronted

These practices are intended to soften the blow of the listener's realization of their situation, as to let it come all at once might lead to a worse reaction than otherwise. This undesirable emotional reaction can be called "ACM", from a customer who entered her favorite store and walked through the aisles, only to be shocked upon reaching the end and realizing that the store no longer carried any of the items she had come to rely on them for. See also Salem78 and With trembling hands, where the person comes to realize their depressing situation on their own.

The words in this section are used for emotional desperation only. To express a concept like "I fumbled desperately trying to open the lock", a different word is used. The words in this section are not used for physically frustrating tasks even metaphorically.

With trembling hands

To perform a pleasurable activity for the last time. Alternatively, to abstain from an activity after realizing it is no longer pleasurable (e.g. "to put away the game controller" etc). This is not due to any negative consequences, but because the activity itself no longer brings even short-term pleasure.

It may also be said of activities that are not pleasurable, but which were expected to yield pleasure indirectly. For example, someone whispering the same wish fifteen times facing the full moon might only slowly realize that it is not coming true, and on the sixteenth time, burst out crying instead of whispering the wish one more time.

September Sprout

Someone who has high hopes but no chance of success, and may not even be aware of the situation. Like a flower just beginning to bloom in September as the days grow shorter, the world they see is all they know and they assume they must have as much chance of success as all the taller flowers around them.

There are many other possible metaphors here; this one relates to an abstract idea from the playground in which late bloomers were cared for by the gardener despite their obvious doom. A darker metaphor could be used, such as a child born with a fatal illness who believes they will grow up but will in fact most likely not live past the age of five.

There should also be a word for the helpless sympathy felt by others observing the situation.

This expression is not used for someone who is too old for their job, nor for a child stationed in a workplace meant for adults. Rather it indicates someone who is both very disadvantaged and wholly unaware of their future prospects, as they may see that they are in a poor situation at the present time but also believe that because everyone else is prospering, so too will they. Thus it is similar to Salem78 below.

Salem78 and RS Defense Hall

These words both refer to a person who has been beset by repeated misfortunes while others have prospered, and believes that their luck will soon improve because they see literally everyone else rising above them. It says nothing about whether the person is to blame for their misfortune or not; the word is for the emotion itself.

The two words are subtly different in that Salem78 implies that the person is relying on positive reinforcement they learned in earlier life, while the person described by RS Defense Hall is in a dire situation and believes that they have fallen so far that anything they do will bring them to a better place.

A good example of the Salem78 meaning is saying that last month was terrible, so the next month must be good, as it would be unthinkable for someone to suffer two such difficult months in a row.

A good example of the RS meaning from in-world history is the Crystals in Nama seeking to form alliances with every single nationality they could locate in the diplomatic Mirror Project, and then, finding none at all, choosing to side with the group which had rejected them the least virulently, figuring that their situation could not possibly get worse.

A second example of RS, also in Nama, involved Nama's government seeking to form a diplomatic alliance with Anzan, one of their historical abusers, who had taken away much of Nama's land. Nama's diplomats stated that they wanted to still be allies even though Anzan had always abused them in the past.

The RS behavior might be translated well into English with the word desperation, as someone who is desperate for a job will even take a job that they dislike or feel unlikely to succeed in.

That horrible town

• Emotional distress and temper tantrums expressed only when one's living situation improves, whether because it was unsafe to do so in worse times or because nobody was around to listen

• In particular, a delayed and seemingly disproportionate negative reaction caused by early trauma. As in English "once bitten, twice shy", seen from the perspective of an outsider who either did not witness the original event or did not understand its effect on the other person at the time.

• Sympathy for a person undergoing the above, just after rescuing them or taking them in. May be associated with certain words in English, as in e.g. We wont go back to that horrible town ever again, where the speaker does not name the place spoken of. Here, the speaker is seeing the world from the other person's point of view, and not their own; Play speakers do this as well, but there is no association with any particular word such as horrible.

This section describes the feelings of the experiencer and the rescuer separately, and so it is possible that Play would use two unrelated words, or even two related but distinct words.

Joshi

To give advice based on an early life experience that no longer applies. Identical to GUD Andanese cipher inakau. This behavior is expected of toddlers and to some extent even of young children (e.g. 10 year old girl giving career advice because her father is happy in that job), but it only becomes a behavior worth criticizing when practiced by adults. It could be compared to the Rainman scene in which the main character tries to stop his brother (both men are adults) from taking a bath because the brother had been burned by hot water when he was a baby.

Billy Joel

The connection between the two emotions is the "Billy Joel CD" incident, in both situations: that horrible town to describe the person seeing the original event, and Joshi to describe their wanting to help in a future crisis based on their hardened view of the original event. Neither of these involved the first person, the person who was rescued.

Color paint

The emotion felt by parents upon sending their child to live in the adult world, realizing the child is not ready but that the time for parenting has run out. In many Play-speaking societies, the government rules even inside the home, and parents cannot keep their children (especially boys) in the household past a certain age, usually thirteen.

Sometimes triggered by seeing the child attempt to use a children's solution (ninapasua) to solve an adult problem (tatūataša). This latter word is not cognate to taša as in a temper tantrum, which derives from thrusting one's thighs.

A similar Play word, ninašamabe, refers to a children's answer to a question, something that might be expected playfully in early life but which becomes embarrassing in later childhood and dangerous in adulthood. An example from Earth would be a child still believing in Santa at age 13, and so confidently so as to believe that they can outsmart Santa by climbing on the roof to steal the other kids' toys.

One difference between this and the Billy Joel emotions above is that the color paint involves a child who has not grown to emotional or intellectual adulthood properly, whereas with the Billy Joels it is the bystander who is stuck in the past (and for a different reason).

more

bring it on

• spitefully hoping for a worsening of one's situation, because that misfortune will be shared with another who will be helpless to escape

wmmh

• femebi pifese: loss of sympathy for a victim upon seeing that they are suffering so much pain it is impossible to relate to them. sometimes also including rejection of those who do express sympathy

• a subset of this is the WMMH tag, as this victim reminds listeners and bystanders that they, too, could be in such pain
• the same, but with half-hearted amusement because of not being in as much pain

• "the screaming ambulance" .... lion/zebra, but with pain and not death

the raw food eaters

• unable to engage in disapproved behavior despite permission, often with the implication that the person is incompetent and therefore undeserving of sympathy. for example, a student may be less likely than other students to play games on a phone during class, not because they pay better attention but because they have difficulty using a phone.

• similarly, someone who eats a bowl of carrots not because they want to eat healthy but because they never mastered the ability to cook or prepare complex meals.

• this also applies to mashed potatoes as a full meal, and this situation is distinct from the carrots.... the first person eats close to nature because she never learned to cook, whereas the second person eats simple things because he never learned to think about what foods to eat at all. There is also the 20 year old autistic man who would only eat pizza, and if this were replaced with a healthy food the situation would be the same .... "you dont get praise for your good eating habits because youre not making a free choice"

whats wrong with my baby

• giving birth to a disabled or diseased baby / "whats wrong with my baby?"

• later love limited by the circumstances of birth, as though the mother caused the disability (lack of medical knowledge)

speechless

• Play ŋamputa, to struggle for words. This is similar to English "dumbstruck, speechless" but whereas the English implies a very temporary condition due to emotion, the Play word is all-purpose and describes toddlers just learning to speak, those with speech impediments, and people overwhelmed by emotion equally well.

still not healed

ashamed of still bearing a scar from something that happened many years ago, where others would have long since healed. basic meaning refers to a physical injury, but a minor one, hence the expectation that it would heal. this therefore overlaps with "herpes". however it can also be used metaphorically, in which case it overlaps with Joshi.

depression

• depression in small children may have a distinct word

• chemical and situational depression may also have distinct words, despite the total lack of psychological knowledge throughout the entire planet

alai

Alai, originally a girl's name, which split into three senses, describing her three characteristics:

1. Someone who wears her sunglasses on top of her head,
2. Someone with dark hair and blue eyes,
3. Any young girl.

The first of these senses would not exist in Play culture but could be replaced by a similar fashion. This is a true eponym unlike most others on this page.

Moonshine culturebound concepts

These are not part of Play society, and even though Moonshine came to exert strong influence over the Players around the year 4200, they did not attempt to make the Players behave like Moonshines. Nonetheless, the Players developed native words to translate the concepts (not ciphers).

• expressions of alarm and crying must always be trusted, even from adults, and even if a listener has a strong incentive to believe the other person is trying to elicit undeserved sympathy or to cause a distraction. For Moonshines, this was taken for granted and it was highly taboo to ignore this cultural norm. Among the Players, there had never been a cultural rule, so the Players created words for the Moonshines' trusting behavior and for the distrust. The Play word for Moonshine was Vemsimu, a literal translation (as the Moonshines preferred).

the myth of the smarter child

may have existed outside Moonshine culture, but Play speakers would deny it. Think about smiley faces, etc, showing the brain always with childlike proportions.

others

"the weeks turned into months, and the months turned into years". Possibly a subset of "with trembling hands"

vampirism

the literal vampires

speakers

An electronic device that read out the Bible using a speaker, even though smartphones were on the market and had already become more efficient. This word is most likely impossible to fit into the context of the storyline, as technology does not progress noticeably with time and inventions do not become obsolete.

galpa-related words as seen from Earth

See User:Soap/scratchpad#Galpa.

incontinent

a word for incontinence broadly stated, meaning the inability to control one's bodily functions, including emotions (which are reflexive verbs in Play and other languages)

I may need to bring those words back here after all.

innocent

a word which compounds with others to produce several senses, all related to lack of violence.

pacifist 1

someone who can only repay violence with unkind words or private writing, and yet considers this to be fair, and so celebrates his verbal aggression and expects others to admire him as a hero for fighting back the only way he can. some may see this person as identical to #pipiapabape, but others will have pity, whereas the pipiapabape normally does not even arouse feelings of sympathy at all.

pacifist 2

a villain-type character who kills and tortures humans indirectly, but cannot commit violence on his own because he is too weak. a trope of scienc e fiction etc, the villain is nearly always killed by his own creation. but this concept does not imply that the villain dies.

pacifist 3

humans imitating animal violence in a playful manner, including sexually.

pacifist 4

maybe aready listed on this page. a human who can only communicate with violent motions, e.g. pushing as hard as possible to get the attn of an animal, because humans are so weak by comparison that these motions are not actually painful to the animals.

sadbomb

this section contains words for emotions and concepts from a video game i worked on from about 2011 to 2014 but never finished. The game uses low-resolution sprites and realistic body proportions, such that humans can only express their emotions with their arms and whole-body movements. The Sadbomb soldiers are animals dressed in bomb suits, larger than humans and with large faces, so they can have proper facial expressions. Nonetheless only their eyes are visible through the suit most of the time, so these facial expressions are also dependent on body positioning, along with the movements of the arms and the fuse at the top of the bomb suit.

Some of the situations the Bombs deal with are caused by other Bombs, simply because they aren't capable of running a society on their own.

sleep on the floor

A certain Bomb is not allowed to sleep in the room with the beds, so they make a huge commotion trying to set up a place to sleep in another room on the floor. It sounds like they are deliberately making noise to make sure others hear their suffering, but it is legitimately difficult to make a place to sleep where no one was intended to sleep.

Initially there was a legitimate reason why the Bomb was not allowed into the bedroom, but it was very minor. Therefore the Bomb suffered much more pain than the others were saved.

The Bomb's bed was empty that night, and the bed knew something was wrong, but was not able to communicate with the missing Bomb.

notes etc

One thing I had not intended when I designed the sprites is that most of the Bombs' expressions seem to match sadness rather than anger, happiness, love, or other emotions. Later I retroactively identified the bombs with the child superheros above. The child superheros originated from a video-game-like situation where they suffered hardships but were ultimately invincible, and the Bombs are easily blown up but "have been playing this game for a long time now and have hundreds of extra lives".

There are no pets in Teppalan societies because animals are tame and are seen as equals by humans. Few humans, even the most warm-hearted, would devote their care to rescuing stray animals, and since there are no pets, there are no abusive pet owners either. This means that there is no need for a speech register for speaking to pets as one might hear on Earth, e.g. "there, there, let's get you to a place where you'll be loved" knowing that the animal will have nothing say in reply but might understand the tone of voice.

Positive emotions

===nuen===to deny the existence of immoral behavior in an enemy, deflating the argument for righteous war. not restricted to war or even to politics. Often describes an attempt to calm down a friend with a feud against a third party. The angry friend will come expecting his listener to side with him, but the listener will say, "you know, I havent seen him do that" etc.

This comes from a dream, and properly, the word nuen refers to the type of person whose existence is being denied, not to the action of denying them. Therefore I will need to create a new word even in English.

exempt

• "why not?": to make an exception to one's own rules about something

Higgs boson

• Higgs boson generates the inflationary phase: to perform a helpful deed in an unexpected place, such as dropping ground-breaking research in a book meant for the wider public rather than in an academic journal. I know now that the Higgs boson was nothing new when I first read about it, but I might never have known what was being talked about were not for the mass-market book.

related conbcepts

Nobodyland

• an imaginary ethnic minority invented by pacifists to be the target of jokes, so that even in wartime people will have common bonds across borders. it is unpatriotic to make fun of one's own ethnicity, or even ancestors, in most cultures. in nations where a tribe can split into political parties, the butt of the joke may be a nonexistent political party. Past political parties are still not used as targets of jokes because of the awareness that some people might admire them.

what the Players didnt like

• educational songs and other material, but aimed at the general population and not just towards small children. often to teach a moral lesson, but book knowledge also counts, especially if based on trivia. exmaples: a song about alcoholism, or about friendship, or listing the US presidents, or dinosaurs (since even adults will not know trivia).

anyone can play

1980s sedan enters a stock car race and comes in far behind, but they were just playing for fun and the real drivers let them in because "the race track is here". There may be other contestants with even more non-traditional vehicles, and in some ways it could resemble early Cocomelon videos where all the animals play sports against each other and the humans, and there are no surprises such as a mouse defeating a wolf, but yet everyone seems to have fun.

the original gumption

This seems to have gotten lost on the page somehow. This can mean one of two opposites, both with a positive side:

• An item that is both cheap and good.
• An item that is both expensive and of middling quality (but sufficient), bought by customers to help out a merchant whom they share a personal bond with.

• oak street supermarket ... possibly a subsense of the original "gumption" word.

• Oak Street had apartments that were much cheaper than most others nearby and also more spacious. They were aimed at artists and art students, "with plenty of storage space for paints and canvas".
• I dont remember what relation the supermarket has to this concept but perhaps I will think of it soon.

The "expensive" gumption does not include e.g. Lockheed Martin.

pride seat

Seeing someone or something which has long been a source of pain or misfortune unexpectedly turn friendly.

the amniotic sac

also "extra work"

MP Absorb

The often wished for "magic magic", a magic spell that gives one more magic power, and can be used at any time, therefore making magic essentially infinite, so long as the user remembers to replenish it. I used this mechanism in a video game (see "sadbomb" above) where the player character had a limited supply of soap (the only available weapon), but this soap could be used to make more of itself, so the player's only concern was to make sure they didn't run the inventory down to 0 before replenishment.

An example of this in a published video game is Secret of Mana's MP Absorb spell, which is just as described above ... a magic spell that brings in more magic points than it takes to cast ... but only one character can use it, and it only works against enemies that have magic points to absorb.

GUD words

From the Grand Unified Dictionary of Andanese (c. 2007). Same only in name and phonology with the current language Late Andanese. Having no etymologies, these are true gumption words and Play will only be able to use them as loans because there is nothing to calque. The GUD dictionary contains far, far more of these words than I plan to list here; the ones I'm choosing are either my favorites or ones that I think could end up in Play after all.

The two syllables at the beginning of many of these words are meant to be eponyms. Thus for example, hunaku is "Huna's /ku/", and so on, where the rest of the word is a private verb. Not all such words are eponyms however.

taunala

possibly describes Kulapila, giving the minimum possible array of tools to complete something, and making the user dependent on the tools

uka

Could be translated into English as sleeper, and might be based on the root word for sleep in some Teppalan languages. The meaning is similar to the English but nonetheless distinct. A good summary would be "virgin, unspoiled, unused, vast, on the side, relaxed" and can appear in people's names, especially boys' names.

huna

hunaku

to switch instantly from one extreme behavior to another, especially if it is nearly the opposite of the first. from a lawyer who went from using b&w commercials in a grave tone of voice to using bright colors and a children's song melody without explanation

hunalu

to "drop the ball" at a job

hunau

from an advertisement that added a "3" to their URL, presumably to track which visitors were coming from which commercials. Makes sense only in the era of television, because today people would just click

maaa

Free currency, which "rains" from the sky, available for very little effort. People who do not receive this currency do not become poorer by not doing so because it is not attached to the wider economy and therefore causes no inflation. (This is a cipher name for STW's currency. The real STW used slavery to achieve its otherwise impossible economic system, but a free economy in which one can get richer without making others poorer exists in theory.)

This might actually need to be two separate words ... one for the free currency (like bingo chips, where its value comes from people declaring it has value) and one for the raining currency (which is wholly dependent on fantasy), as they are not originally the same idea.

Free currency

1. Someone who has this currency is called wettiapos in Poswa. This is from Play fip tuŋu paus, but the Players did not use that expression.

uh oh

Possibly related to the above, someone who provides an illegal service under the cover of providing a legal service in addition. Think of the amusement park restaurant selling a single peanut for $1 (with a free bottle of water) because they were not allowed to sell water directly.

Scattered disc

These words have little in common with each other. They are the least likely to have established usage in Play and may end up in my diary or autobiography if I ever actually write one.

imepo

A political philosophy espoused by the Gold party approving the exploitation of any people deemed inherently submissive or capable of being made submissive. This came to be used as a term similar to BDSM, but the political meaning was primary. See Memnumu#Licele and further down the page, though this is a culturebound term.

I coined this term very early, at a time when I was still flexible with word order, so the word order here is VSO and does not correspond to anything in my current languages. The first morpheme, meaning "deed", is still present as ì in MRCA, but it would not be used this way even if moved to final position.

the dirty boy

• dirty boy who stained the carpet, for imepo, and not for revenge. this word may just be "imepo" however

The inevitable winner

A powerful entity facing a very weak one, where the stronger party is assured of victory but the weaker party believes they have a chance and in fact started the fight. The stronger party simply waits, or literally sleeps, throughout the battle, and then claims the opponent when the opponent loses the strength to fight any longer or enters a trap.

Often said of predatory animals. This is CT Apple Bed, and can also describe inanimate objects such as a bed, which stays proudly in one spot, exerting no effort, knowing that the sleeper will return again and again even if they at first put up a struggle in order to stay awake all night.

In general, when speaking of humans, the Play word for the effortless crushing attack that defeats the weaker party is vepi, and could be derived to something such as meupi "to crush while sleeping" to indicate how little effort the stronger party needed to expend. Another possibility is ŋūāupi "to crush, making a toy of someone" and yet another is patāupi "to crush while playing (with)". This last would imply a situation where the stronger party did not even know how much pain they were causing.

Therefore Play has a native word for this, not a gumption word at all. It is listed here because some other languages might need it.

Spice Beach Octopus

spice

"to die by spice" means to die in a humiliating way, such as by eating poisoned fruit, and often with an implication that if the person died because they were too passive; for example, if they had killed an animal instead they would not have needed to worry about poison, since there are no poisonous animals. This is linked to spices because the words for spice and poison are the same or cognates in many languages. This replaces the word /mau/ from an early draft of Andanese when the vocabulary was based on the same wordlist later imported into Play.

Victoria Beach incident

Giving help and expecting nothing in return may require traveling unprotected in a wild land, and could make the helper vulnerable to an attack by an otherwise very weak third party not previously considered a danger by either the helper or those they attempt to help. For such a complex definition one might expect to see a proverb, but gumption words are precisely those whose meanings are not recoverable from their etymologies.

A close parallel from in-world history is the Pine Tree Planters, a group of very young children who were brought into areas of wilderness in the midst of a major war to plant pine trees, but with delinquent adult guards who focused mostly on discipline. They soon found themselves facing a band of kidnappers who chased off the adult guards and then rapidly began abducting the children into their hideouts in eastern Nama. These men actually considered themselves rescuers, but the children did not know this, and the men's motives never convinced the Players or even the enemies of the Players that they were genuine, so they became known as an army of kidnappers who had appeared only because the young Pine Tree Planters had been trying to good deeds for the Players.

This is similar to English no good deed goes unpunished, but highlighting the possibility of those doing good things for others being vulnerable to attack specifically by third parties. The name "Victoria Beach incident" comes from a group of children sent to a beach to clean up trash, only to find themselves attacked by small animals who would not have been brave enough to attack adults.

the first octopus

possibly related is this. "swim slowly past eight arms" and the octopus who was allowed to attack people, but people could not hit back; officially, this was explained as despite the octopus being stronger than those people, when it was in fact because the octopus was stronger.

the second octopus

A man who killed another man who was in the process of apologizing for something he was not guilty of.

Herpes

From a herpes patient who denied treatment because acknowledging the visible disease would also require her to acknowledge a much greater invisible disease. It is unlikely that in Play there will be a medical counterpart; this situation refers to daily life in general.

Possibly related is people who blame their medical conditions to something everyone else faces, for example blaming vitamin D deficiency on a lack of sunshine despite living in a populated area where many other people share the same climate. Common in the modern world but likely less common on Teppala; therefore perhaps used mostly for non-medical situations.

Staples 10

Equivalent to Play pitušaiva; see Memnumu#The_right_to_pick_fruit. This is a word describing how e.g. small children will talk to others their age even if adults are far more numerous in a gathering of people and one would naively expect them to talk with the adults. Also describing the action of peering around, with great difficulty, to find other children in the crowd of adults, whose larger figures make it difficult for children to simply see across the room.

Metaphorically, also used for adults seeking their own kind when surrounded by others they dont feel comfortable with. Compare also in science fiction (and with some wry sarcasm in modern online environments) humans struggling to find another human amidst a crowd of a thousand robots.

The connection between the Players' right to pick fruit and children struggling to find other children in a crowd of adults is difficult to explain. The Players did not expect children to carry money, so stores were of no use to them; therefore, a law allowing people to pick fruit would enable children to find at least some food on their own without relying on adults. However, this had always been legal, and indeed fruit-picking was a constant activity during times of famine in the early days of the Play nation. Looking further back, there had been a tripartite division of labor in which men hunted, women farmed, and children picked fruit. Therefore, the Players' declaration did not change the situation for children.

nupy nutu

"to ask for help, helplessly". One cannot better their situation without a source of wealth or power to use against others.

Possibly a Play idiom about speaking the wrong language, rather than a single word. The nupy nutu speaker goes in to the proper place to seek help, because in fact there is only one place to seek help, but knows that they can do nothing on their own to make their case, and that whether their problems are attended to will depend entirely on the mood of the people they plead their case to.

puava & šibeši

Play cipher terms relating to early school years. A subtype of nupy nutu, where the person is afraid to ask for help simply because they are a child among adults and feel this same emotion all the time rather than only in certain circumstances. If these are originally Andanese words, they may be calqued into Play as the numbers that they spell ... 24 and 44 (possibly fapūpi pās and fappāpi pās).

Pissies

Not a typo. A word I invented in English to use as a generic insult, probably in my late teenage years, though I may have a had a conlang equivalent first, in Thaoa, and the definition at the time was simply the name of a coworker I had had at a previous job, with no obscene connotation. In English the singular is pissie, not pissy.

The definition of a pissie is someone without talent, who in the žaipa worldview is of little value because they are neither intelligent nor physically strong.

Though it is difficult to imagine this word existing and not being an insult, my original intention was somewhere between disinterest and weak sympathy, not to disparage my former coworker.

the worst candidate

a candidate for a job or for political office who has all the weak points of all the other candidates, but no strong points, and defends their position by saying that if such weak points are OK for other people, they should be OK for any candidate. Can describe inanimates as well, e.g. "the worst game in the bundle", meaning it combines the most disliked features of most (or all) of the other games. But the animate sense must come first, since Play would be unlikely to have a word that means "combining the worst of..." without some preexisting referent.

"He's the worst member. He just comes in here and leaves." said of someone who was well-loved despite contributing little to an online community.

THis is similar to pissie, but whereas a pissie is born with a lack of talent, "the worst candidate" has negative traits because of conscious behavioral choices. The two might have related words in some languages, but they are not the same.

Oort cloud

These words are unsorted and even more difficult to classify than those in the scattered disc section.

Group 1

Baseball

To provide unwanted conversation in order to avoid talking about a controversial topic. Referencing a political author who gradually transitioned to writing about sports so as to appeal to a wider audience, but lost the people who were interested in politics. "it is better to be last among the winners than first among the losers", because even though there were thousands of other bloggers also writing about sports, the total audience size was much larger, so this person believed that making the switch was in his interest.

Has much use in the modern world, as with social media algorithms promoting content averse to a consumer's interests, ... "what is this crap?" etc, but also can refer to situations one might encounter in a more primitive world, such as a restaurant that runs out of meat and begins promoting vegetables as if they were just as delicious, serving a customer an all-vegetarian "meat stew" and charging the same price saying that it was just as good and just as rich in nutrients.

the aviator

"linux bird", someone who is unpopular despite allying with a popular cause. Can be used to describe unpopular children at school who adopt the fads of the more popular clique, but are rejected by the popular kids just as much or sometimes even more so than those who do not imitate the fads.

During a period when sexual abuse of captured slaves was unprosecuted and even legalized in many areas of the empire, some slaves kept themselves dirty on purpose, hoping that this would dissuade their attackers, but found themselves attacked and abused even so.

th

... an emotion only felt by authority figures. One who can act at any time, but holds back out of compassion until they finally run out of patience. Remember the parents throwing out their son's music collection.

to eat sadly

Might be an ordinary verb in Play, but if so, both would need to be transitive, so the literal meaning would need to be something like "eating and crying on my meal". Glossed in dictionary (no headword yet) with a comment of "Subway woman, child, Crohn's" but I only remember the meaning of the last of these three.

IGC

to deny reality by incorrectly repeating what one has heard

1. lollipop boy (self-interest). the original "lollipop boy" was an adult male who surrendered to invaders, thus also surrendering his manhood. However he had always been eating candy even before then, and therefore was a symbol of easy submission. The specific situation involved an adult male bystander, part of the resistance, seeing him in disbelief cooperating with the invaders, as if unaware that he would be abused or killed once he had served his purpose, and the lollipop boy waving that person away in such a manner as to signal the invaders that that man was fair game to be killed, but that the lollipop boy was too weak to participate in the coming violence.
2. yabemis fepabīšani (pabužas)
3. parents who repeat their children's words back incorrectly (varied interests)

pi pīu

• The Poswa word for poor people, pupu, derives from Play pi pīu, because poor people are so wide-eyed when they visit a city or a place with a concentration of wealth that their eyes move from one object to another, wondering in each case about what it possibly might be. The term was not used this way in classical Play. Although the Players were proud of their ability to get by with no material wealth (some Players never even handled money), they did not take pride in poverty specifically, and there were still upper and lower classes among the Players; it was just that their scale was greatly shifted down compared to other societies such as the Leapers. Thus, poverty was not seen as a good thing. Nonetheless, to make fun of poor people in even a light-hearted way such as the above was considered unpatriotic.

Group 2

novotrade

possibly a subsense of taapau above but not restircted to men

a derived form of this refers to the assumption that someone will appreciate a present, or some other experience, just because it is related to something they like. e.g. the movie Groundhog Day is not actually about weather, but someone might assume a weather enthusiast would enjoy it

triple action soap

• triple action soap

medicine on counter

tinactin, Coricidin, etc

embarrassment and humiliation

besides the normal words, there should be one more for the "camera"/"school door" situation. ambassador = embarrass-a-door

There are actually two concepts here: school-door is specificallly for embarrassment when the person doing the humiliation is wrong about something. the camera word is when the humiliator is correct but thinks so little of the other person that their being wrong is expected behavior and not worth a remark.

there should be a word for the "..." response of that person, too, as English does not have a good one.

Group 3

ever more

• something more extreme than what was already thought to be extreme. Often seen as good, such that citizens of Upuayaha would talk about a second city with an even more luxurious lifestyle, and how they did not feel jealous because Upuayaha was good enough

ever more II

after team A loses seven games against a rival team B, team A is in the lead, but the game is declared a tie "to be fair" and then team B is awarded the victory in a runoff.

nbpt

• Newburyport temper tantrum

that one street

• to seek solace from one's low position by finding someone whose life is even worse

busy

• Play cipher žinuša: someone who used to help, but "he's not doing anything anymore" and can even get in the way. Can describe children who age out of a play group and leave younger ones behind, but is more common in use among adults where people's joining and leaving the group is not tied to their age. Usually, the person left behind has some need that can only be easily met by the person who decided to leave.

Group 4

pipiži

• the two meanings of Play cipher pipiži

1. a place in a school where people go when theyre not interested in studying
2. the same building used for the opposite purpose, because it is accessible only to students and therefore they are all there together when they feel that they should do schoolwork after all

A proper Play word might be such as tīanaves, "quiet house", although it would not explain the double meaning to those who did not know the story of the original school.

dial the telephone

Perhaps two different concepts. First is to provide someone an easy way to access help just in case they need it, second is to give overly precise instructions, either to belittle them or because one wants to minimize contact with them ("if the telephone doesnt ring, they dont need me"). But these may be positive and negative sides of the same situation and even the same emotion.

sulalaka

seen by some as an escape from galpa. Because sulalaka does not depend on one's physical constitution, it is theoretically accessible to all humans, including men, women, and children. In practice, like all forms of power, it is unbalanced, and there are humans who feel excluded from sulalaka as well. A good modern example of sulalaka would be access to and skill with modern technology, particularly computers and smart devices.

Note that sulalaka is likely not a valid name, even if calqued, since it is most likely a variant of "Sul's children", where Sul is a female superhero from my early writing.

Group 5

why rabbits have large ears

Kneepad/buddy system/bacillus, for someone who is always worried about physical safety and does not understand why others facing the same dangers are so careless by comparison. (Rabbits are not the only prey animal, so why are they the only animal with such largeears? )

These people are often fearful of one specific thing, without being fearful in general, and resemble the horrible town personality type.

Possibly related to Sorensen politics.

Tapimuū

The inhabitants of the eastern Play state of Tapimuū were believed by some outsiders (mostly non-Players, but also some western Players) to be small and delicate, and therefore outsiders expected them to support politics focusing on protecting their physical safety rather than individualism and warlike behaviors. Indeed, they were described as being childlike in many ways, especially behaviorally. For example, they were said to sleep twelve hours a day instead of eight. As to why they had not been crushed in war or peaceably absorbed into the wider Play population, these people had no consistent answer, but noted that Tapimuū was near Thaoa, a land which had for all known history been the source of a persistent plague causing birth defects, and therefore that other Players might avoid the area in general and leave the evolutionarily less fit inhabitants alone.

This theory was never put to the test, as in fact the people of Tapimuū were physically indistinguishable from those around them, though it is true that they were slightly smaller on average.

Group 6

cui lunui toy

à trap all in snow walls and watch laughing from roof, but someone sneaks in from underneath and throws them off roof, and then flees away. So they move back to their homeplace (Romania or Moldova; opposite of CLT), v box with note in it & elderly woman in store

dither

An hour-long office meeting, of which ten minutes are devoted to figuring out who among the attendants will be required to do a certain simple one-minute job

its gonna happen

Chinese restaurant

pinutas fuča

Perhaps belongs under desperation in some sense. Describes someone who so strongly desires to work in a certain field that they will take on a much less desirable job than others take, and in some cases a job that doesnt even exist because there is no wider pool of applicants willing to fill it.

Also can describe someone who seeks to work in only a very narrow subset of a field of work, usually but not necessarily worse off than the others in that field, because in that one narrow subset the job pressures that the person cannot deal with are weaker or absent. e..g "trade language" / translingual = bišuša / sušuse

yavimeupesu

"you paid for it, but you dont own it"

also Mercedes car not allowing owner to open the hood

Group 7

oatmeal

Someone who is of such low social status that they avoid taking sides in all disputes, especially political disputes, knowing that if they ever lost a fight, they would be the first target, and that if they were to win, they would gain nothing.

This was the original "Oort cloud" word, since that person found comfort by being far out of orbit unlike the others who were involved in conflicts every day.

new years day

of small children, seeing celebrations as a bad thing because of loss of control. Similar to the modern expression going to Abilene, showing that it can happen to adults as well, especially when in large groups

"these days"

pessimism that everything will get worse, leading one to reach out to even former enemies. Exemplified by a Mario quote:

Everybody's saying that their wishes aren't coming true these days. Aren't our wishes getting through to the Stars anymore? --- Koopa

Although I know canonically this takes place in a setting where Koopa and Mario were not pre-set to be enemies, a naive player would not know that. (The same is true in Super Mario 64.)

trying to comfort you

Possibly a separate word for any bodily motion that fails but is not covered by any sense of desperation. This could ve very broad, covering emotions as well, for example crying for someone else's sake when reading something they wrote, though neither that person nor anyone who could help them is around to see their would-be rescuer cry.

Stories and other gumption words with wider context

Animal stories

04:53, 25 January 2023 (PST)

The Players usually assigned Andanese names to animals in the belief that animals think in Andanese. The Andanese were not offended by this, for cultural reasons difficult to concisely explain, but see galpa and kuma for examples of why animal traits were in some ways considered superior to those of humans.

the two ducks

The first duck, Nuyunuya, has a lame wing and cannot fly, so waits throughout the winter using as little energy as possible in the hopes that a new unknown food source will appear from the icy lake.

The second duck, Lunita, is dying and exhibits aggressive behavior towards all, assuming that anyone approaching, including other animals and even other ducks, is coming to kill him.

The two ducks entered the Play language as eponyms, one of the very few sources of loanwords in Play. Both ducks' behavior came to be metaphorical for hospital patients and the chronically ill, but for different types of illnesses. Nuyunuya describes someone whose only goal is survival, and has no knowledge of what lies ahead, and therefore no estimate of their chances of survival. Lunita (rendered in Play as Bunita because of the /l/ > /b/ substitution rule) describes someone at the end of their life, who knows that they have no chance of long-term survival, and mistakes offers for help as the delivery of the inevitable death blow.

Consider also the boy throwing rocks outside the hospital, believing all others were abductors. His name was Maŋup, meaning "whip point", and in a Play story he may have met the two ducks, but they did not actually live at the same time or even near each other.

If the boy's name is changed to Nayunayasai, it would sound like the first duck's name, and still have nearly the same meaning as Maŋup. There may also be a second child corresponding to the second duck; this would most likely be a girl. If so her name could be Vavame, even though this does not closely resemble the other duck's name. Note also that the roles of the two may be swapped, as the boy's behavior as described above sounds more like the second duck than the first. However this could also be part of the story.

These children may be in their early teen years, meaning that they do not have access to adult help and are expected to fend for themselves. Their injuries make them feel like young children again because they are once again helpless. If this is the case, the boy likely would not fear abduction, but rather (like the duck), that anyone passing by was simply planning to kill him.

Note that ducks in this world are comparable in size to humans, and tame enough to interact with, so (as with all other animals) they are not seen as cute, helpless, or deserving of human compassion. But neither are they disliked or seen as dangerous to humans.

Early-added words

emancipation

Subsense 1: To approach a loyal customer asking them to buy even more, while ignoring potential new customers in the perception that they will be more difficult to convince. It is important to note that in the context of Play culture, this was not seen as bad, because customers often did not understand what their suppliers could do for them, as many were entirely unfamiliar with the concept of stores and merchants. "We're glad we could help you, ... we can also do this" was a comforting phrase, not an intrusive sales pitch.

Subsense 2: Ordering very large quantities from a restaurant or other store. Exampls are the Subway cashier who misheard "18 hungry cheerleaders" as "1800 cheerleaders", Calvin & Hobbes May 15 1994, and my view of something that happened on kids' Jeopardy once. "Emancipation" is the store-owner being freed from this responsibility, able to refuse service to a customer who would be a great inconvenience.

Subsense 3: to use someone else's property because you have more need for it than they do; often causative ("X assigned Y's Z to W"); a possible quadrivalent verb

the store

this may be somewhere else on the page but i cant find it now. the original sense of gumption related to buying items at a high-priced store out of loyalty, and conversely also to the store selling a better quality item for a lower price. The customer did not seek high price for its own sake, because there was a third store selling at even higher prices ... rather, the store the customer chose loyalty to had prices in the middle.