Star Wars Language and Vocabulary

Let's talk about the fun words and phrases of the Star Wars universe!

To start, here's an issue near and dear to my heart: the word "youngling".

The issue for me is: you're doing a space fantasy, and you're already introducing a bunch of new terms for fantastical new concepts - why the need to make up new terms for things for which English already has perfectly good words?

It's one thing when there's at least an ostensible technological distinction to be made - hence "comlink" instead of "radio" or "droids" instead of "robots". But did we really need "padawan" instead of "apprentice" and "youngling" instead of "child"?

And I still don't understand how a word as innocuous as "fodder" becomes fecal expletive slang. Do Hutts eat their own waste, or something?

 

He stole the idea from Rogue Planet, which came out around the time AOTC was written.

At least Knights of the Old Republic got it right...

 

I should also note that I have no problem with "youngling" coming from Yoda, as it suits his idiosyncratic speech. What I'm taking issue with here is its use across the board by characters like Obi-Wan and Padme.

 

The only vocabulary that really annoys me is when Han Solo tells Jabba not to send one of his twerps to do his bidding.

Twerp?

Uh, that's a little too slang and real world for me. (Who says twerp anyway?!)

Just another good reason that entire Jabba addition shouldn't have happened.

 

I use the word twerp and know plenty of people who do. I think you just really hate that added scene.

"see you in Hell" is another interesting one...

 

Doesn't really bother me. I think there's plenty of room in pulpy space opera for goofy sounding terminology. Helps add a bit of a flavor when, for example, characters talk about blasters instead of laser pistols or guns.

For the record, though, "youngling" is not a Lucas invention like "poodoo" or something is.

 

I've always found that issue somewhat confused . Jabba does say "Bantha poodoo", which the subtitles translate as "Bantha fodder" - "You may have been a great smuggler once, but you're Bantha fodder now."
Putting aside the childish term 'poodoo' in Huttese, the sentence makes perfect sense. Han's about to get killed, so he might as well be nothing more than a corpse lying around for Banthas & other creatures to eat, i.e. 'fodder'. It's basically the same as referring to someone about to die as 'worm food'.

What wouldn't make sense is referring to someone whose number is up as 'bull crap' (which one would assume is the earthly translation of 'Bantha poodoo'). You might say that they're full of it, or that it's what they just said, but it doesn't make any sense in terms of their life about to end.

 

Referring to your enemies as excrement makes perfect sense to me. You're not only dead, you're poo.

Now "stinkowhiff" never exactly bothered me, but it is pretty ridiculous.

 

Threepio also uses the word - "That malfunctioning little twerp. This is all his fault."

 

It would, if Poodoo = excrement, but it doesn't it is fodder = Animal feed

Especially when Sebulba says poodoo when he crashes...

 

I think we are meant as adults to realize that "fodder" is a gloss over a more vulgar term that would have not made a PG rating. I have always read it as "bantha ****", in any case. Not just fodder, but used up, digested, excreted waste of that fodder when it is no good for anything. Though, given the treelessness of Tattooine, surely bantha chips would be gathered for fuel? We see numerous campfires in the Tusken encampment in AotC. What were they burning?

 

Except that "fodder" makes all the difference between "reasonable enough fictional language translation that happens to sound funny" and "WOW. That's a dumb, dumb gag, and easily the worst moment in the OT."

 

I always thought it was meant to allude to the phrase "sleeping with the fishes"; to be killed by gangsters and to have the body be cast off into the wilderness. I could have sworn I've also heard the phrase "you're fish food," used in exactly that way. (?)

 

Same with 'worm food', i.e. "this time tomorrow you're going to be six feet under, getting eaten by maggots."

'Poodoo' is obviously an allusion to excrement, & the use of the term as an expletive by Sebulba in the PT pretty much cements it, but I still think the subtitled translation in ROTJ makes perfect sense, especially considering that Jabba's a gangster, after all.

Another line that grates - Daultay Dofine to Nute Gunray in TPM, "Are you brain-dead?" Not only is it a very Earth-like expression, it's quite a rude thing for someone that high up in an organisation like the Trade Federation to be saying to his superior. Very clumsy dialogue, would have been better to say, "Are you out of your mind?"

 

Yes, the fodder thing is really weird. I'm sorry to those of you who think this is "childish", but poodoo definitely means "crap".

 

What's wrong with taking "Fodder" at face value?

 

"Nerf-herder" is a strange one. Manages to take me out of the scene every time. I keep picturing Harrison Ford picking up little, plush balls. (Was this meant as cross-promotion or something?)

"Death-sticks" is another one. Only in Star Wars is a narcotic given its proper designation. No "nose-candy" there.

 

It's worth noting, in case anyone missed it, that "youngling" has its origins in Old and Middle English.

Origin:
bef. 900; ME yongling, OE geongling; c. D jongeling, G Jüngling.

Poodoo, not so much.

 

Yes, but ROTS isn't the only episode that uses that word. If ROTS is the one you were referring to. Didn't Yoda also use the word Younglings in AOTC? (When addressing the "class" when Obi-Wan came in)...

 

It may seem odd that the word poodoo is seemingly used as a swearword if it means fodder but it could have two meanings. Jabba uses it in the phrase ?bantha fodder? to inform Han that he is going to die. He wasn?t actually going to feed him to banthas, he just meant it in the sense of dying unpleasantly ? like ?worm food? as previously mentioned. If that was a phrase that was widely used though, it could have come to have a wider meaning and ended up being shortened to just poodoo/fodder. And bear in mind that the word is a translation. It might literally mean fodder, yet used in a phrase like that it takes on another meaning, understood by those who know the phrase. To those that don?t know it, it seems illogical (as we might say ?raining cats and dogs?).

So Huttese speakers have come to use that shortened term ?poodoo? to mean more than just fodder. ?Bantha fodder? meant an unpleasant death, so poodoo is now a word that is used to exclaim such a thing, conjuring up the feeling that something bad has happened that you are upset about ? or that you have suffered an unfortunate and catastrophic failure ? ie ?it has died badly? would perhaps be the meaning. So when Sebulba crashes disasterously, he may well exclaim ?poodoo?.

Also I would say that it is possible for words to have two different meanings depending on their context. Consider the ?S? word ? it has the literal meaning of excrement and it is also used negatively as an expletive to denote something bad. But it has also come to have a generic meaning as an alterative to ?stuff?, as in ?get all your **** sorted out?, ?I?ve got **** to do? and it also means ?nothing? as in ?I didn?t see ****?, ?There?s **** all on TV?. It can also have a positive or intensifying meaning as in ?****-load?. You can also call something **** to mean its bad but also call it 'the ****' to mean it's good. These phrases have come into being but they often don?t have any real connection with the original meaning of ?excrement?. It seems they just rely on it being a strong word and thus creating an instant impression of something either being bad, or more intense (which is allied to using ?bad? to mean ?good? I suppose).

In the same way, I believe that the phrase ?bantha poodoo? was a phrase which people understood to have a certain meaning, but it got shortened and so the Huttese word that meant fodder came to be a swearword with a broad meaning. One thing to remember is that the phrase ?bantha fodder? only had a literal meaning to people who kept banthas or were actually speaking about what they eat. Others used it generally as Jabba did to refer to an unpleasant death, and seemingly other associated meanings developed from there, which need not be a logical progression.

So people use the phrase bantha fodder as in ?I?m going to make bantha fodder out of you? which has the meaning ?you?re going to have a bad death?

Then ?bantha fodder? on its own comes to have a Huttese meaning like ?bad-death?.

Then the bantha bit is dropped because it is unnecessary and so you have people saying fodder/poodoo to mean ?bad-death?, a single word that can be applied to many situations to mean something bad or unfortunate, since the death part is no longer so literal in referring to death and just means a type of failure. So poodoo can be used on its own as a swearword in meanings far removed from its origin as fodder. It still has that meaning but in different contexts people will know what you mean. So if you crash your racer and shout ?poodoo?, everyone knows you are unhappy about your failure and not talking about fodder.



Daultay Dofine to Nute Gunray in TPM, "Are you brain-dead?" Not only is it a very Earth-like expression, it's quite a rude thing for someone that high up in an organisation like the Trade Federation to be saying to his superior. Very clumsy dialogue, would have been better to say, "Are you out of your mind?"

It may be out of place for an underling to speak to a superior like that but consider that those three ? Gunray, Haako and Dofin

 

Whoa. You made death sticks sounds way more enticing than they need to be. I just figured cigarettes were outlawed on Coruscant.
And I'm gonna have to call bantha poodoo on that mistranslation in ROTJ. Poodoo means poodoo, not fodder. Besides, he was supposed to be Sarlacc fodder, not Bantha fodder.