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Ways in which Doctor Who has made a difference in our lives and popular culture

Only a few TV series have added words to the English language. Doctor Who added at least two, possibly three. “Dalek” was the first one added to the Oxford English Dictionary. “Not only had I created a monster, I had created a word,” wrote their creator, Terry Nation. “What writer could ask for more?”

Later, the Doctor’s unique traveling machine, the Tardis, also found its way into the OED. Though it’s a handy machine (able to travel through time and space), it entered the language for one of its even more impressive properties: as it occupies two different dimensions, it’s bigger on the inside than the outside (which is just as well, because it’s outwardly disguised as a 1920s-style British police box, leaving little room to move). Hence, any room or cabinet that somehow seems more spacious on the inside is a “Tardis” (which, for the record, stands for “Time And Relative Dimensions In Space”).

But perhaps the series biggest contribution to the English language was the prefix “cyber,” to describe anything computerized. Though the term “cybernetic” was used in 1948, it was probably some ongoing Doctor Who villains, the Cybermen, who turned “cyber” into a prefix. Countless IT and internet geeks, not to mention science fiction authors, have followed their lead.

1 year ago