10 Everyday Words Star Wars Gave Us

Episode IV, Star Wars: A New Hope, the film that lit lightsabers everywhere, was released 40 years ago today. For the first time, we (or at least those of us who were alive back then) met Luke and Leia, Obi-Wan and Vader, Han and Chewie, C-3PO and R2-D2. It was also the first time we heard Star Wars lingo, so much of which, as linguist Mark Peters says, is now commonplace. Here are 10 everyday words given to us by Star Wars.

1. JEDI

Good at something? Feel free to call yourself a Jedi. This term for a knight of the light side—and by extension, someone proficient in a particular field or skill—is said to come from the Japanese word jidaigeki, a genre of Japanese period dramas set during the Edo period or earlier. Such dramas often feature samurai warriors, ronin (samurai without masters), craftsmen, merchants, and government officials, and are also believed to be the inspiration behind the Star Wars films themselves.

2. JEDI MIND TRICK

Although we first witness the Jedi mind trick in the original Star Wars (“These are not the droids you’re looking for,” Obi-Wan Kenobi convinces a Stormtrooper), we don’t hear the term until Episode VI, Return of the Jedi. “You weak-minded fool!” Jabba the Hutt chastises his underling. “He's using an old Jedi mind trick.” Now the term refers to any illusion or subterfuge.

3. THE FORCE

“The Force is what gives a Jedi his power,” Obi-Wan tells Luke. “It's an energy field created by all living things.” It’s also been used to refer to everything from positive vibes to inner strength. The force also refers to a body of police, while the word comes from the Latin fortis, “strong.”

4. THE DARK SIDE

Along with a light side, the Force also has a dark side. The phrase is now commonly used to describe the negative aspects of something. The Dark Side of Giving Employees Unlimited Time Off, Digging into the Dark Side of Our True Crime Obsession, and The Dark Side of Detroit’s Renaissance are just a few examples.

5. NERFHERDER

“You stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerfherder!” Leia says to Han. This excellent insult seems to refer to zoophilia, says Peters. That is, a sort of, ahem, attraction to animals. Nerf, before becoming the brand name of soft, spongy toys, was originally a drag racing term meaning to bump another car, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). And in a collision of nerd universes, Nerf Herder is the name of the American rock band behind the Buffy the Vampire Slayer theme song.

6. STAR WARS

In the early 1980s, Star Wars became the derisive nickname for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), Ronald Reagan’s proposed defense strategy of destroying enemy weapons in space with lasers and anti-ballistic missiles launched from satellites. Aerospace journalist Robert Hotz wrote about the “real star wars” in a 1982 issue of Space World magazine, while TIME promptly called Reagan’s initiative his “star wars defense concept” after the SDI was publicly announced a year later.

7. CARBONITE

Before carbonite referred to the material that encased Han Solo in Episode V, The Empire Strikes Back, it was a coke-like material (1810), a kind of salt (1830), and a type of explosive (1890), according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The Star Wars definition was added to the venerable dictionary in 2008.

8. STORMTROOPER

“Only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise,” Obi-Wan says. While stormtrooper wasn’t coined in the Star Wars universe, the films certainly popularized the term. Stormtrooper first came about during World War I, according to the OED, and referred to a soldier, especially a German one, trained to carry out sudden assaults. By the early 1930s, it meant a member of the Sturmabteilung, a paramilitary wing of the Nazis. According to Google Ngrams, the popularity of the term dropped after 1944, rose to a peak in the mid-1970s (around the time Star Wars was released), and an even higher peak in the late 1990s (Episode I, The Phantom Menace was released in 1999).

9. DROID

Droid is another term that was popularized by rather than coined in the Star Wars films. Short for android—which was coined in the late 1800s, but popularized in the 1950s by science fiction writers—droid made its first appearance in the stupendously titled short story, “Robots of the World! Arise!” by Mari Wolf: “They're stopping robots in the streets—household Robs, commercial Droids, all of them.” The OED lists no other usages until Star Wars. "I'm only a droid,” says Threepio, “and not very knowledgeable about such things.”

10. PADAWAN

The Phantom Menace gave us one good thing: the word padawan. Meaning a Jedi apprentice, the term is now used to refer to any apprentice. “One of my super young cooks—I call him a ‘padawan’—always tries to taste stuff,” a Top Chef alum recently told US Weekly. Padawan is also a municipality in Malaysia. The name is apparently a blend of the Bidayuh words Padja and Birawan, Padja the name of the eldest son of an ancient village elder and Birawan the word for mystical healing beads.