Second Life Lexicon

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Use this dictionary, glossary and acronym finder when you're clueless in your avatar. Add more, please!

Contents 1 A 2 B 3 C 4 D 5 E thru F 6 G 7 H 8 I thru K 9 L 10 M 11 N 12 O 13 P 14 Q thru R 15 S 16 T 17 U thru Z 17.1 Edits

A

• 2L - Second Life (or SL)
• Abuse -

1. A violation of Second Life's Terms of Service or (in particular) Community Standards;
2. A report filed regarding violations of Second Life's Terms of Service or Community Standards;
3. The staff at Linden Lab responsible for monitoring and handling cases of abuse;
4. Actions a griefer takes against another resident

• afk - Away from keyboard (see also brb)
• Allocation - 1) The total amount of land a resident/account can own or otherwise hold. Premium subscribers receive an allocation for 512m2 at no additional land use fees; 2) The total amount of land a group can own. A group cannot own land unless it has allocation equal or greater than the land size. Group allocation is donated by group members, who pay for the amount they donate (in addition to any land they themselves own) regardless of whether or not the group is currently using the allocation.
• Alpha - A special channel of an image or texture (the normal channels are red, green, and blue), the alpha channel is used in Second Life to indicate transparency, marking which parts of the image should be clear and which should be opaque. In order to make textures (for objects or clothing) in Second Life that have transparent parts, you will have to use an alpha channel.
• Alpha Channel - The portion of an image or texture used for transparency.
• Alt - Slang (popular usage) for an account owned and played by a real-life person who also has other Second Life accounts. In common usage, the Second Life resident is referred to by their first or most reknowned account name, and other account names are known as "alts". For example: "Oh, that was me on my alt" or "Secondary Dude is Main Guy's alt".
• Animation - A file (or inworld inventory item) that moves or animates your avatar. You can use animations to make your avatar clap their hands, dance, blow someone a kiss, and much more.
• AO - Animation Override
• Avatar - 1) The digital representation of your virtual self in Second Life. Or, in plain English, the character in Second Life that's you; 2) Other people's characters. Generally, any other thing with a name above it (though there are very convincing cardboard cutouts in Second Life); 3) A "costume" or outfit; a full set of avatar body parts, clothing, and/or attachments that provides a specific look.

B

• Ban - 1) The act of explicitly forbidding entry. Landowners have ban tools to prevent certain residents (whom they specify) from entering their land; 2) To add someone to your ban list and thus eject them from your land; 3) (popular usage) The permanent removal of someone from Second Life. This can only be done by Linden Lab. Thankfully, most people who break the rules learn to behave well before this has to happen. Not to be confused with a suspension, which is a time-out of sorts.
• Body Part - Shape, skin, hair, and eyes are the separate body parts of an avatar that combine to create its (usually) organic form. Different body parts can be created and saved to a user's inventory and switched between as the mood strikes. There are several examples of body parts of each gender in your inventory "Library" folder.
• brb - Be right back (see also afk)
• Build - 1) To create/make something out of primitives in Second Life; 2) An object comprised of 1 or more primitives; 3) An engineering term for a specific version of the Second Life (or other) software.
• Bump - 1) The act of pushing another resident, either by running into them, hitting them with a physical object, or using a scripted object to apply a force to them; 2) A projectile designed to push residents. These projectiles are usually named "bump". Improperly scripted bump objects can occasionally be seen littering no-script areas, as their scripts are disabled (thus preventing them from deleting themselves); 3) Adding a comment to a forum post to place it at the top of of the topic's list. Forum topics are sorted with most recent postings at the top of the list. Bumping an old post can get it back to where people will notice it, often done when the post has fallen off the first page.
• Bump Map - An extra texture layer on objects that adds "bumpiness" to them. This can provide the illusion of detail by resembling wood bark, cut stone or a number of three-dimensional surfaces.

C

• Calling Card - An inventory item you can trade with other residents. Calling cards serve as a contact list of sorts
• Camera - The particular viewpoint from which you see the Second Life world. Normally, your camera is behind your avatar. Second Life allows you to move your camera around in many different ways to see things from many different viewpoints.
• Chat - 1) Textual conversation in Second Life; 2) To converse with others near you in Second Life, as opposed to IM.
• Chat Channel - One of over a billion pseudo-"frequencies" that objects and avatars can chat on. Avatars normally speak on channel 0, and can only hear chat on channel 0. Objects can chat and listen on any channel.
• Clothing - Jacket, shirt, pants, undershirt, underpants, gloves, socks, shoes, skirt--the parts of your avatar that are worn on top of its body and created and edited in appearance edit mode. You can create different articles of clothing and save them in your inventory, then switch between them as the mood strikes. You can even design your own clothing and upload the textures to Second Life.
• Contribution - An amount of land holdings a Second Life resident voluntarily moves from their personal land use tier into their group's total allocation. Group contributions are added to the total amount of land that you own to determine your peak usage and land use tier.

D

• Damage - Describes any region marked "Not Safe", where Second Life's rules of damage and death are in effect. Any scripted object can be set to damage avatars (usually by firing damage-enabled projectiles). An avatar that takes lethal damage is instantly teleported to their home location. The overwhelming majority of Second Life is not damage-enabled.
• Deed - 1) To give a parcel of land to a group. The group must already have enough group allocation to own the land; 2) To give an allocation to a group so it can own land. Usually done via the Owner Makes Contribution With Deed checkbox; 3) To give an object to a group. The object becomes the property of the group and can no longer be returned.
• Deep-Think - Related to sim performance. A deep-think happens when a physical interaction within a sim is taking a very long time to compute. A deep-think can be caused by a large amount of colliding physical objects, when a physical object is stuck in an awkward position, or when advanced shapes are physically interacting in some weird way. Symptoms of a deep-think are slowness of avatar movement, your avatar continuing to move, or logging off issues. You may still be able to chat normally but moving and other physical movement could be impared.
• Derez - To remove (derez) an object from a sim within Second Life. This generally is done through deleting the object or taking the object into inventory.
• Donate - 1) To change ownership of something from yourself, to a group you belong to. Land donated to the group must be covered by the group's allocation. Objects donated to a group cannot be returned to you; if someone attempts to return a group-owned object, it will be deleted. Money paid to or earned by a group-owned land parcel or object enters the group's cash pool and is paid out to group members. 2) (as in 'donate box') An object that allows residents to right-click and Pay it. Unlike a vendor, a donate box performs no service for the person paying.
• Dwell - This term has been replaced by the term 'traffic.' It refers to a system used by Second Life to determine how long a resident has been on a parcel.

E thru F

• Eject - To force a user to leave your property. Ejecting a user will cause them to be quickly teleported off your property and outside your property line. The user can come directly back on your property after being ejected.
• Estate - Used by Linden Lab, some users, and Second Life's user interface to refer to island regions and their local preferences menu (such as sun position, ground texture, and other things that only effect that region). Estate controls (World > Estate... menu) are only available to private island owners. Users who own full regions connected to the main continent cannot use estate controls.
• Event - A group activity, led by a host, that starts and ends at specific times. You can click on the Events button to see all the day's listings in the Events Calendar.

• Freebie - Items available for free in Second Life. Some freebies are only for individuals that have been a resident in Second Life for 30 days or less.
• Freeze - 1) A function used by Linden administrators (and occasionally landowners) to bring a havoc-wreaking resident under control. Once frozen, an avatar stops flying, falls to the ground, and is unable to move. 2) A condition where the Second Life program (and occasionally the computer) stops responding.

G

• Gesture - A unique combination of sound, animation, and chat that can be preconfigured to go off with a keypress or a specific phrase. For example, you can have your avatar clap his or her hands and play the sound of applause whenever you type /clap. Gestures are configured by right-clicking your avatar and selecting Gestures, or selecting Gestures from the Edit menu.
• Ghost - An object that is no longer in Second Life 3d-space, but is still visible on at least one resident's client. You won't be able to interact with the object (you'll pass right through it), and you won't be able to return or delete it (since it doesn't actually exist). This is different than an object that is phantom, which is a deliberate object setting.
• Grid - The world of Second Life is sometime referred to as a "grid" or "the grid". One grid is what other virtual worlds may call one world or one "shard". All visible islands and regions on a map are included in the term "grid".
• Grid-Monkey - A grid-monkey is a Linden assigned to care for the grid and resolve hardware and software issues. There usually is a grid-monkey on-call at all hours of the day/night, making sure someone is ready to take care of any issues at all times.
• Griefer - A person who goes around in Second Life and griefs other avatars. This might be in the form of caging, shooting, etc. that is unexpected and not asked for; it is a form of terrorist attack on your avatar. Griefing does not do harm and is more of a nuisance.
• Group - A group is a collection of Second Life residents formed for a common interest. Second Life groups consist of residents who are members and can be officers of that group. Groups have titles that appear before a resident's name (shown only above their avatar, not in chat).

H

• Home - The location in-world your avatar considers the center of their Second Life existence. You can teleport directly home at any time by opening the World menu and choosing Teleport Home. You can change your login location so you always start Second Life at home. If you wander (or march) into a damage-enabled area, and are killed, your avatar will teleport home immediately (none the worse for the experience).
• HUD - Heads-Up Display

I thru K

• IM - 1) Instant Messaging; an interface to send one or multiple Second Life residents a message from anywhere inworld, even if they are offline; 2) To send someone an IM.
• Infohub - A Linden-owned location inworld. Infohubs used to be telehub centers for Second Life.
• Inventory - The collection of clothing, objects, textures, etc. that your avatar possesses inworld. Your inventory travels with you, and you can use any of it at any time.
• Inworld - 1) Anything that takes place within the virtual environment of Second Life. 2) The state of being logged into Second Life.
• Island - A simulator / region that is detached from the main continent and only accessible by directly teleporting to it (i.e. "Cayman is an island sim."). Sometimes also used in the more general definition of the word, to refer to a small land mass surrounded by water.
• Kick - 1) The expulsion of a resident from another resident's land by the landowner. 2) The forced log-off of a resident from Second Life by an administrator. An administrative kick is usually followed by a time-out period, during which the kicked resident will be unable to log into Second Life.

L

• L$ - A Linden dollar (L$, "LindenBucks", or "Lindens") is the inworld Virtual Currency used in Second Life. Most transactions you make inworld with other residents will be made in L$.
• Lag - 1) The delay inherent to a connection between two computers on the Internet, especially an unusually long delay between a client and a server. 2) A delay or interruption in a network or Internet connection caused by slow response times and/or lost or missing data. 3) (technically incorrect but popular usage) Slow or jerky performace in a 3D application caused by an overworked processor, memory bandwidth, video card, or hard drive. 4) (technically vague popular usage) Any situation where part of the Second Life experience is not performing as desired.
• Land Baron - (popular usage) A resident of Second Life who owns a significant quantity of land, especially with the intent of selling it at a profit.
• Land Owner - A land owner is a resident who owns land--anywhere from a parcel to (multiple) estates.
• Landmark - An inventory item that contains coordinates to a location in Second Life. You can mark the location on your map, and teleport there instantly.
• LD – Link Dead
• Liason - A Linden Lab employee that serves as an in-world representative and contact for all residents, especially newcomers. They're the people you see around with the name "Liaison Ralph Linden".
• Linden - 1) The company responsible for the creation and development of Second Life. More company information can be found at: http://lindenlab.com/ 2) An employee of Linden Lab, especially one logged into Second Life. Linden Lab employee accounts always use the last name "Linden", such as Philip Linden. 3) See L$.
• Linden Scripting Language - A programming language used to create interactive content in Second Life.
• LL – Linden Labs
• LM - Landmark
• LSL - Linden Scripting Language

M

• Machinima - Machine Animation or Machine Cinema, the art of creating movie-quality animations and other cool effects in SL.
• Material - Second Life objects can be made of different materials; this setting affects the collision sound, weight, friction, etc. of the object. Example materials are Stone, Wood, and Rubber.
• Mature - Second Life uses a rating system for sims to let the user know what type of content/behavior to expect in that area. Mature or (M) regions may include (among other things) profanity, nudity, and sexual content. The Second Life Community Standards still apply in these areas, so discretion is still recommended.
• Member - A resident of Second Life who belongs to a group, but is not an officer. Members receive a custom title and may have access to group-owned land or builds, but do not share the benefits and powers that officers receive.
• Membership - 1) Status within a Second Life group. 2) Status of an account's Second Life subscription (i.e. Basic or Premium membership).
• Mouselook - Mouselook is the first-person camera view in SL, as seen from the eyes of the avatar. When in this mode the mouse is used to move the camera around, hence the name. Mouselook is often used for weapons, vehicles, and grabbing objects.
• Mule - The use of an avatar for carrying inventory items not used a lot by the main avatar. A Mule avatar is also used in many instanced to experiment with looks HUDs, skins, shapes, etc.

N

• Neg-Rate - (deprecated) To rate another resident Negative (as opposed to Positive) in any or all categories. Second Life residents can no longer rate or be rated negatively.
• Newbie - (popular usage) A newcomer to Second Life; a resident who has joined for a relatively short period of time and/or is not familiar or comfortable with Second Life's nuances. Also spelled 'noob' or 'n00b'.
• No-Copy - An object whose permissions do not permit the current owner to make additional copies of the object. These objects have (no-copy) in their name in the inventory.
• No-Fly - Any land parcel that does not permit flying. You can fly through no-fly parcels, but as soon as you touch down and stop flying, you'll be unable to fly again until you exit the no-fly parcel. If you get really stuck, teleport somewhere else.
• No-Modify - An object whose permissions do not permit the current owner to make changes of the object. These objects have (no-modify) in their name in the Inventory.
• No-Transfer - An object whose permissions do not permit the current owner to resell or give away the object. These objects have (no-transfer) in their name in the Inventory.
• Notecard - A small text file within Second Life. You can embed pictures, landmarks, and even objects inside notecards.

O

• Object - Any three-dimensional construction in Second Life. Objects are built from a primitive base. Frequently, owners will link the primitives together into one cohesive object.
• Occlusion - A 3D graphics rendering technique that ensures that the computer does not spend time attempting to draw things that are not visible (typically because they remain hidden behind something else).
• Officer - A resident of Second Life who belongs to a group who is granted special benefits within that group. Officers can change group information, including charter and titles for both officers and members. Officers can also deed land to a group and buy land for a group.
• Orbit - An event that occurs when an avatar is pushed with extreme force into Second Life's "space" (area high above the clouds), sometimes unexpectedly and involuntarily. Can sometimes cause the avatar/user to end up going "off-world" (lost to the servers because of the extreme speed the force caused) and require the user to relog. Most often caused by a pushgun or some other sort of weapon that is scripted to push physical objects.

P

• Parcel - A section of land within one region that is treated as one lot. All land within a parcel shares the same owner, prim limit, About Land settings, ban lists, etc. A person can own more than one parcel in a region, and it is possible (though unlikely) that a parcel is not contiguous. (In other words, some parcels are made up of two separate shapes.)
• Particles - Two-dimensional sprites (graphic images that always face the viewer). Second Life's particle system allows a wide variety of particles, enabling residents to create burning fires, glistening waterfalls, vapor trails on jet fighters, tracers on bullets, the occasional macabre spurt of blood, floating hearts of affection, billowing smoke, rainbows, and much more.
• Partner - A resident of Second Life who "partners" up with another resident; partners can be spouses, couples, or just friends.
• Peak Usage - The maximum total amount of land a Second Life resident owned, at any one time, in a monthly billing period. To reduce possible exploitation of land ownership, Second Life bills land use fees based on peak usage; holding 4096 square meters for one minute costs the same as holding it for thirty days. Note that this amount always includes the resident's group contributions as well.
• Permissions - Special settings on any object or Inventory item within Second Life. Permissions determine such things as whether the item is no-copy, no-modify, or no-transfer; what permissions the next owner will have, whether the object is to be shared with the group, whether others can move or copy it, and so on.
• PG - Second Life uses a rating system for sims to let the user know what type of content/behavior to expect in that area. PG areas can not contain nudity, sexual content, or profanity. The Community Standards apply to all PG areas.
• Phantom - A setting on any object in Second Life which determines whether the object collides. A phantom object does not collide with avatars or other objects.
• Physics - 1) A mathematical model for how forces and objects interact. 2) A setting on objects that can be enabled, causing the object to fall and react to gravity, as well as collisions with other objects. Without physics, object remain exactly where they were placed, no matter what force is applied to them.
• Preview - A version of Second Life currently being tested for a near-future release. Residents can often use the Second Life Preview software and try out new features that haven't yet been release in the 'live' Second Life world.
• Primitive/Prim - The basic building block of Second Life, also called a 'prim'. All in-world objects are constructed from primitives. A prim is a basic shape (such as a box, sphere, cylinder, etc.) that can be manipulated, stretched, cut, twisted, hollowed, and otherwise mangled into various forms. A builder can link a collection of prims together to form one cohesive object.
• Profile - A short bio for a Second Life avatar, which contains information about the resident: picture, name, online status, SL birthdate (when they joined SL), account type, partner, ratings, groups, desires/skills, picks, classified ads, and anything else a resident chooses.
• Pushgun - A scripted object capable of applying a force to objects, but especially to other residents. Pushguns come in numerable styles and implementations. Use of pushguns on other residents can be considered harrassment and is not permitted in Safe zones or non-damage-enabled regions.

Q thru R

• Rate - (deprecated) To make a rating; to tell Second Life what you think of another resident. You can currently rate any other resident positively for their appearance, behavior, or building skills. You may also rescind a previous rating. Your rating will help change their reputation.
• Recursion - 1) An expression where each successive value is determined by applying a function to a previous value. 2) A formula that generates a successive values through recursion. 3) See recursion.
• Region - A named area within Second Life, also commonly referred to as a simulator or a sim. Second Life is divided into square regions, each 256m on a side and assigned a name. The regions are aligned and assembled so that the borders between them are, for all intents and purposes, seamless. You can stand a one side of a region border, with your friend on the other. Despite the fact that the two of you are in different regions, you can chat freely, throw a baseball across, even drive a car back and forth, without interruption.
• Relog - To restart Second Life, usually by closing the Second Life program and restarting it.
• Reputation - Your inworld prestige within Second Life, as rated by other players. See rate.
• Resident - The term for a person who uses Second Life. This can refer to the user of the account as well as their inworld avatar. SL users are typically referred to as residents.
• Rez - (commonly attributed to the movie 'Tron') 1) To bring an object into 3d-space within Second Life. This is usually done by dragging the object from inventory into the world. 2) To create a new primitive in Second Life through the building tools.
• RL - Real Life
• Ruth(ed) - Symptom of an avatar failing to fully rez; appears as a short, female avatar with a light-brown bowl-cut hairstyle. Ruth is the name given to this default, intermediate avatar-rezzing state. As used in a sentence: "You've been Ruthed."

S

• Script - 1) Second Life's in-world programming language. Also referred to as Linden Scripting Language or LSL. 2) An in-world program, written in LSL. Scripts can be placed in objects to provide a nearly endless variety of functions.
• Shader - An advanced 3D graphics feature used for specularity, ground-cast shadows, water ripples, bumpmapping, and other pretty effects.
• Simulator/Sim - A simulator or 'sim' is a square, named region of landmass that makes up part of the Second Life world. Despite what you may have learned from certain games, a sim in Second Life is a region of land, not an avatar or character.
• Spam - 1) A bulk message unrequested and undesired by the recipient. 2) A stream of repeated messages, esp. by a script. 3) To repeately send messages such as spam.
• SL - Second Life (or 2L)
• SLNN – Second Life News Network
• SLT – Second Life Time is the same as Pacific Standard Time
• SLurl – A link you can click on in a web browser that takes you to a particular place in Second Life. A Slurl is made up by the following format: http://slurl.com/secondlife/region/xcoordinate/ycoordinate/zcoordinate. Anyone can make an Slurl with this formula.
• Stipend - A weekly grant of free L$. Stipends are paid to all Premium Account Residents every Tuesday.
• Suspension - The temporary removal of someone from Second Life. A suspended resident will be unable to log into Second Life. The resident will recieve an email stating the reason for their suspension. A suspension is not to be confused with an administrative kick, which includes a short timeout from Second Life but will usually not include an email unless an actual suspension is later applied.

T

• Telehub - (deprecated) A centralized teleport location in Second Life. When using a telehub in Second Life, you arrived at the closest telehub to your intended location. You could then fly to your destination from there. Telehubs are no longer in Second Life; you can teleport directly to your destination.
• Teleport - To instantly travel to a location (as opposed to manually walking or flying there). Residents can teleport via the map, with landmarks, or through invitations given by other residents.
• Temporary - Objects marked in Second Life as not being permanent. When an object is marked as temporary, it will be deleted a few minutes after use. This is great for things like gun projectiles, dominos, or beachballs that might get away from you, disappear somewhere, or end up on no-script land (where their script would prevent them from deleting themselves).
• Texture - An image or graphic applied to an object or avatar that can have alpha. You can create your own textures in any third-party graphics program and upload them to Second Life for L$10 per image.
• Tier - 1) One of Second Life's levels of land ownership and land use fees. Each tier has a monthly price (i.e. $5) and a maximum amount of land that can be held (i.e. 512 square meters). 2) (tier up) To make a land purchase that increases your monthly land use fees.
• Title - A title is a string of text that appears before your name when you have a group active (unless you turn this option off via Preferences > General). Titles can be changed by officers through the Group Information window (in the Titles tab). Titles can be up to 21 characters long.
• Tortured - (tortured prim) A primitive that has been, using a glitch, modified into a shape that is normally not possible.
• Town Hall - A meeting with residents where a Linden is usually the guest (keynote) speaker.
• TP - Teleport
• Traffic - A system used by Second Life to determine how long a resident has been on a parcel.

U thru Z

• User - A person who uses Second Life, traditionally called a 'resident'.
• Vehicle - A scripted object whose movement you can control. Typically, a resident will sit on/in the vehicle and use it as a form of transportation. Vehicles include cars, airplanes, hoverboards, boats, UFOs, and much more.
• Vendor - 1) A Second Life resident who sells objects, clothing, or other items. 2) A scripted object that can sell objects, clothing or other items to residents.

Sources

http://secondlife.com/knowledgebase/index.php?action=glossary

http://puritansguidetosecondlife.blogspot.com/2007/03/must-know-second-life-vocabulary.html

Edits

Started by Fidgette Kiwi 4.5.07

Fidgette Kiwi 4.12.07

(See the edit history and authorship by clicking "history" in the top tab. Be sure to log in!)