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Ever notice how we often get new vocabulary words from science fiction worldbuilding?

Take robot. In 1920, Karel Čapek’s “RUR” (Rossum’s Universal Robots) introduced the word, which ultimately replaced the much clunkier “automaton.” “Robota” means “forced labor” in Czech.

The familiar phrase genetic engineering first appeared in Jack Williamson's story "Dragon's Island" in 1951. It's now a common term in biology and genetics, referring to the direct manipulation of an organism's genes.

Robert Heinlein introduced us to grok in Stranger in a Strange Land. Grok can be thought of as grasping something completely, including on a more emotional or intuitive level.

These words and phrases join an illustrious group of popular concepts from sci-fi to make it out into the mainstream, but today, I want to talk about another type of made-up language that sci-fi introduces: fake swear words.

Battlestar Galactica is one of my favorite sci-fi shows, especially the reboot from the early 2000s. During …