When you’re ensconced in a culture, you don’t always realize that those around you might not know what you’re talking about. I don’t mean that they’re unfamiliar with a given topic of conversation, for example, the latest Marvel movie or a reboot of a popular sci-fi tv show. I’m talking about the actual words and phrases used to discuss things. I don’t know that many geeks think about it much, but we do have a language of our own.

First off, let’s just clarify that the culture I’m talking about is general, pop culture geeks, not people into technology and computers who dub themselves geeks but base it on their profession more than their interests. Every profession has it’s own terminology and “tech speak” is just that, not “geek speak”. But within geek culture there is differing terminology depending on the geekdom and even some geeks can’t understand over the other. To be honest, as I’m not exactly into gaming, there are a lot of terms (often acronyms) used by hardcore gamers that I need to look up.

I started thinking about this topic mainly because of a meme (a geek term that’s more widely known, but typically mispronounced) that basically said people must think we’re pirates because we talk about ships and canon so much. And we do! So for the uninitiated, here’s the breakdown of these two terms that are used widely among all ages of geeks.

Ship – As in “relationship”. It refers to wanting characters to become intimately involved in some way. Perhaps the most widespread recent example is “shipping” Finn and Poe from Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Canon – That which must not be messed with. In other words, it’s the official story for a specific creation. You will often hear a geek supporting her argument with “that’s canon so they’re not going to change it” or “the creator recently stated it wasn’t canon”.

And even within specific fandoms there is terminology that “outsiders” won’t pick up on. But I could go on for days about that, picking out movies, tv shows, games, all manner of things that have their own not-so-secret codes. But I’ll leave it at the pirate lingo for now and might come back to this sometime soon if other terms start to gain notice.