The Best Sci-Fi Swear Words For Everyday Life

When you think of the granddaddy of faux, science fiction-based curse words, odds are the first one that springs to mind is frak from Battlestar Galactica. Though it originated in the 1978 original, frak proved such an effective fake swear that it was adopted by other shows and even transcended the boundaries of science fiction.

It popped up primarily as an homage on shows like 21 Jump Street, 30 Rock, Chuck, Warehouse 13, and many, many more. As we said, it’s the top of the heap as far as fake profanity goes, and if you want to curse without cursing and tip off your audience as to your geek cred, you toss in a frak or two.

Frak translates as that very similar-sounding four-letter word, and as Starbuck taught us in the 2004 reboot series, it can be said with endless amounts of nuance. From a hard f-bomb to the quiet “I know I frakked up” version, fans of Battlestar Galactica have heard countless variations on the sci-fi swear that set the standard for all others.

Farscape is a highly creative sci-fi series, from the bizarre aliens and the living ship to the sheer volume of inventive swear words. What separates this series from the rest is that John Crichton is the only human on the far side of the galaxy, making these truly alien swears.

For starters, get used to hearing frell and frelling, the Farscape equivalent of the f-bomb. It doesn’t sound as satisfying to drop as frak since it’s missing that hard “k” sound, but you could try the term frellwit, which is an amazing stealth addition to your daily vocabulary.

As Ka D’Argo once told Crichton, “You smell like dren. You look like dren.” You can probably work out the meaning of dren on your own. Probably Farscape‘s second-most-used swear, it doesn’t bear much resemblance to its English equivalent, but we can’t deny it has a certain impact. Related is eema, which is the source of dren.

Yotz is the Farscape equivalent of “damn,” most of the time, sometimes it’s used more similarly to “for Christ’s sake” with “for yotz sake,” or it could be “foolishness,” as said by Pilot at one point, “we’re in no mood for yotz.”

There’s a lot more available, from traclk (a slur for a promiscuous woman, usually directed at Chiana), hazmot (the b-word), and even the far less offensive, fahrbot (crazy).

The Maze Runner started out as a series of YA novels by James Dashner, and we’ll admit, reading the Gladers saying “shuck this” and “shuck that” lacked the impact of hearing it in theaters. If you abandon a group of teenagers anywhere for long enough, they’ll start to develop their own language, but even we’re impressed at the sci-fi swears they came up with instead of, you know, trying to escape.

Shuck is the most common and the least subtle; you know what it means, and it’s just as versatile, with “shuckface” one of the many potential variations you can drop next time you’re in a Lord of the Flies scenario. If someone has shucked up, they get called a slinthead, which has no direct analog, but as with all great swear words, you get the drift.

The other common Glader sci-fi swear is klunk, which stands for a pile of dung, as used in the sentence, “This pile of klunk doesn’t know how to handle a spear.” Why they decided to use the term klunk is unknown, but it might be referred to the sound it makes.

In a smart bit of worldbuilding, The Maze Runner: Scorch Trials revealed that different glades developed their own terms, with Group B using stick instead of shuck.

Firefly gets around the sci-fi swear problem creatively by cursing in Mandarin instead. Now, Nathan Fillion is a charming performer, and Malcolm Reynolds is one of his best characters, but even we would be taken aback if he called us a “frog humper.” That’s just one of the many Mandarin insults to be found along the outer rim. Chinese characters even appear in in-universe advertising, most notably in Serenity, when River Tam is activated by a commercial playing in a bar.

That said, Firefly does include your typical sci-fi swear words; in this case, the most common is gorram. That means exactly what it sounds like, but again, as with frak, that hard consonant sound works so well to convey emotion when you just have to drop a gorram. It even works in a sentence, such as “Fix your gorram face before I fix it for you.”

Another of the typical swears is rutting, which, again, means exactly what it sounds like. When you hear it in a sentence, like “This rutting steering wheel is sticky,” you get the full impact of the word.

While it’s not a sci-fi swear word, it is our favorite slang from Firefly, and that’s shiny. You would use shiny to describe the fancy dress that you’ll wear to sneak into an aristocrat’s ball and secure a cow smuggling contract. That might be a little too specific, but shiny simply means “cool.”

We’re hesitant to share the sci-fi swear made popular by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, as Douglas Adams managed to find the most vile, most horrible, absolute rudest word in existence when writing his seminal novel. Do not, whatever you do, use the word Belgium while out in public. You can refer to Jean-Claude Van Damme as being Belgian, but not that he is from Belgium.

As explained in the novel, Belgium is “completely banned in all parts of the Galaxy, except in one part, where they don’t know what it means, and in serious screenplays.” Right below it is cricket, which is based on the unfathomably bloody Krikket Wars, and most species can not understand why humans would engage in something so barbaric.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is filled with other species-dependant sci-fi swear words, but of all the series, this is the very last one you ever, ever want to quote while out in public.

Red Dwarf is another sci-fi series from England, and another swear word to add to your lexicon is the lovely smeg. This is a way to say that other s-word with only four letters, either by itself or in phrases such as “deep smeg” or “a world of smeg.” For example, if you wake up as the last living human onboard a ship with the hologram of your last bunkmate, an evolved cat, and a fussy maintenance droid, you would say, in a low, slow tone, smeg.

Smeg head is a common phrase, usually to describe Rimmer, the last living human and a very lazy, very cowardly man that, if not for his historical value, would have been jettisoned light years ago.

In the quest to find new and creative ways to insult Rimmer, the rest of the crew keep coming up with new variations of smeg and also, twonk, a different way to say git, which we understand is a very British insult for someone that is unpleasant and/or childish.

Regardless of which one you hear directed towards Rimmer, you know, just from the sound of it, the tone, the caustic delivery, that it’s an insult, and that’s the hallmark of a great sci-fi swear word.

Star Trek is, when compared to the other shows on this list, staid and uptight, as we can’t imagine Riker ever calling someone a “frog humper” or Janeway dropping a frak…..no wait, that one we can see. Regardless, Star Trek is filled with sci-fi insults thanks to the noble and honorable warrior race, the Klingons.

One of the most used curse words in the entire franchise is petaQ, which roughly means idiot, but to a Klingon, it’s a fighting word. Right there with it is taHqeq, another vile insult only to be thrown around if you wish to instigate a duel.

But if you want to use the most vile insult in Klingon, it’s QI’yah, which is never to be said at someone and only over your own screw-up. Otherwise, you might bring shame upon your house.

It makes sense that the honorable Klingons would have an amazing array of different ways to insult one another, and it’s equally understandable that Starfleet officers, unlike every other sailor, ever, don’t have a potty mouth.

Sci-fi swear words are not a new invention. Case in point is the classic Robin Williams sitcom, Mork & Mindy. Williams played Mork, an alien from the planet Ork, who comes across Mindy, a regular, 21-year-old human living in Colorado who lets him live in her attic. Over the course of four seasons, Mork tries to understand life on Earth, but he retains some odd customs from his home planet.

For one, there’s the Ork greeting, “na-nu na-nu,” accompanied by the Vulcan hand sign for “Live Long and Prosper,” but given as a handshake. Then there’s also shazbot, which is Orkan profanity for that other word starting with a “sh.” Get used to hearing that one, because Mork drops it almost once an episode, at the very least.

Though he didn’t try to create any other sci-fi swear words, Robin Williams was infamous for trying to sneak profanity from other languages into episodes of Mork & Mindy, eventually resulting in a multi-lingual censor having to be hired simply to keep him reigned in. It mostly worked.

Unlike the other shows on this list, The Expanse decided to do away completely with sci-fi swear words and just have the characters cuss like, well, anyone else would in their situations. Stranded in a derelict transport shuttle millions of miles from the nearest outpost? Start swearing. Trying to stop the war from breaking out between Earth, Mars, and the Outer Rim? Start swearing.

The first few seasons don’t include swears, but once the series moved to Amazon Prime after the fourth season, you’ll notice a distinct difference right away. There’s no need for frak or gorram when the show is hosted by a streaming service and gets to hide from the prying eyes of censors. So, though there are no sci-fi swear words, we have to respect The Expanse for being upfront.