Horribly overused apocalyptic-sounding words you should avoid putting in the name of your cheesy book, movie, or videogame

I know you want your edgy, violent media product to sound suitably grim and epic. But from now on, please consider these terms off-limits:

Redemption
Prophecy
Legacy
Salvation
Fate
Dead
Legend
Trinity
Dark
Age
Creed
Tale
Blood
Doom
Resurrection

If that scuttles your plan to release Blood Prophecy: Legacy of Dark Redemption, here are some woefully under-utilized, kinda-religious-sounding words you might try instead:

Transubstantiation
Monophysite
Dispensation
Cloister
Homo(i)oúsios
Diffused
Thummim
Pseudo-Dionysian
Semipelagian
Hermetic
Exegesis
Ordination
Exhortation

Any I’ve missed, in either list?

6 thoughts on “Horribly overused apocalyptic-sounding words you should avoid putting in the name of your cheesy book, movie, or videogame”

Ed Heil March 2, 2011 at 11:36 am

Actually it works nice if you mix the two lists.

DARK THUMMIM

SEMIPELAGIAN RESURRECTION

CLOISTER PROPHECY

Suggestions for list 2:

“EREMITIC” (which I used to get mixed up with “hermetic” to produce the mongrel “heremetic”)

You can’t live in West Michigan and leave out the dreaded “ARMINIAN”…

And some more:

INFRALAPSARIAN

SOTERIOLOGY

HYPERDOULIA

PONEROLOGY

PRE-ADAMITE

CARPOCRATIAN

and going farther afield:

LUBAVITCHER

MAHAYANA

TWELVER

ANTHROPOSOPHIST

Andy Post authorMarch 2, 2011 at 4:28 pm

Haha, great idea and list, Ed! I knew you’d have some solid additions to the list.

Also: anthroposophist. Awesome word.

Ed Heil March 3, 2011 at 12:27 am

Anthroposophy is weird. It’s basically Theosophy as re-imagined by an Austrian who idolized Goethe, and who didn’t have a deep-seated distaste for Christianity (unlike Theosophy’s Mme. Blavatsky). Owen Barfield, one of C.S. Lewis’s closest friends, and a really fascinating thinker in his own right, was an Anthroposophist.