Glossary
All this vocabulary is extract from the Dune Chronicles of Frank Herbert
Arrakis : the planet known as Dune; third planet of Canopus.
Arrakis (Dune)
Crysknife : the sacred knife of the Fremen on Arrakis. It is manufactured in two forms from teeth taken from dead sandworms. The two forms are "fixed" and "unfixed." An unfixed knife requires proximity to a human body's electrical field to prevent disintegration. Fixed knives are treated for storage. All are about 20 centimeters long.
a Crisknife
Dune Men : idiomatic for open sand workers, spice hunters and the like on Arrakis. Sandworkers. Spiceworkers.
Fedaykin : Fremen death commandos; historically : a group formed and pledged to give their lives to right and wrong.
Fremen : the free tribes of Arrakis, dwellers in the desert, remnants of the Zensunni Wanderers. ("Sand Pirates" according to the Imperial Dictionary).
a Femen
Guild : the Spacing Guild, one leg of the political tripod maintaining the Great Convention. The Guild monopoly on space travel and transport and upon international banking is taken as the beginning point of the Imperial Calendar.
a Guild Navigator
Mentat : the class of Imperial citizens trained for supreme accomplishments of logic. "Human computers."
Naib : one who has sworn never to be taken alive by the enemy; traditional oath of a Fremen leader.
Sandmaster : general superintendent of of spice operations.
Sandwalkers : any Fremen trained to survive in the open desert.
Sandworm : sandworms grow to enormous size (specimens longer than 400 meters have been seen in the deep desert) and live to great age unless slain by one of their fellows or drowned in water, which is poisonous to them. Most of the sand on Arrakis is credited to sandworm action.
a Sandworm
Sietch : Fremen word for "Place of assembly in time of danger." Because the Fremen lived so long in peril, the term came by general usage to designate any cave warren inhabited by one of their tribal communities.
Smugglers : idiomatic for Free Traders.
Spice : known as the Melange. The "spice of spices," the crop for which Arrakis is the unique source. The spice, chiefly noted for its geriatric qualities, is mildly addictive when taken in small quantities, severely addictive when imbibed in quantities above two grams daily per seventy kilos of body weight. Muad'Dib claimed the spice as a key to his prophetic powers. Guild navigators make similar claims. When someone have a diet high in melange the whites and pupils of the eyes turn a deep blue (indicative of deep malange addiction). Its price on the Imperial market has ranged as high as 620,000 solaris the decagram (we will say it in credits for Mankind).
Stillsuit : body-enclosed garment invented on Arrakis. Its fabric is a micro-sandwich performing functions of heat dissipation and filter for bodily wastes. Reclaiming moisture is made available by tube from catchpockets.
drawings of a stillsuit