zeerust
noun · first attested 1983
A joke dictionary handed out spare meanings to place names, and this one escaped into science fiction criticism.
The dated quality of something originally designed to look futuristic.
-25.5333°S 26.0833°E · Q184412
Record
- Relationship
- Named from the place
- Confidence
- Well attestedThe place link is the standard scholarly account.
- Attested
- 1983
- Part of speech
- noun
Explanations here are written for this atlas. Dictionary text is not copied; the sources are linked so the claim can be checked.
- Step 1
Zeerust
- In English
zeerust
Douglas Adams and John Lloyd's The Meaning of Liff (1983) assigned invented definitions to real place names that had no other job. Zeerust, a town in South Africa's North West province whose name combines the surname Coetzee with the Dutch rust, rest, was given to the tailfins-and-ray-guns look of obsolete futures. Science fiction readers adopted it, helped by the accidental echo of rust.