Hey there and welcome to Furry, Explained! I’m Finn, a big black cat from the internet, and Furry, Explained is my show about furries and their culture. In this episode we’re going to do something a little different; as you can probably tell by the title we’re going to go over some furry slang. As with any large but specialized group of individuals, furries have their own set of terms that they used solely in the context of the furry fandom. Think of it as a language, within a language. We’ll be going over exactly why furries have special words and phrases to describe certain things that are reserved for the fandom, and after that I have a list of terms here that I’ll go through, define each word, and explain the context around where that term is used. This is going to be a fun episode; it’s going to be a lot less scripted than usual and the second segment is going to be very rapid-fire with terms and definitions coming right after each other. Hopefully by the end of it, you come away with a few new words added to your vocabulary, and you’re a lot more comfortable talking like a seasoned member of the furry fandom. I’m excited to get started so let’s get into it! Welcome to Furry, Explained, and we’ll get started right… here.

 

So what exactly is Furry Slang? Well if you look at the actual definition of the word slang, it’s defined as a group of informal words, said more in speech than in writing, and restricted to a particular group of people. That’s why I wanted to put the word slang in the title of this episode in the first place; most of these words you’ll learn about are very informal, and only have meaning when put into the context of the furry fandom. As you might have guessed, this episode is targeted more towards newer furries, since members who have been in the fandom for a decent amount of time should know what most of these mean, but hey, it never hurts to review. Now I’ll go ahead and say this upfront: outsiders already find furries weird, and part of the reason why definitely has to do with is some of the words in our vocabulary the we use. But I actually think that’s part of the fun of being a furry; after a while, you won’t find some of the things we say all that weird, because you’ll know what a lot of these words, acronyms, and phrases mean, allowing you to carry a furry-related conversation as easily as having a normal one. Now I’ll be honest, I was debating on putting this in the last episode talking about furry communication, but I actually shifted the focus of that episode kinda last second to talking about the actual process of starting a good conversation with furries, and shoehorning something like this into it didn’t really feel right. But I still think it’s important to know most of these terms when you’re in a furry environment, as it’s one of the main barriers to someone new to the fandom from truly fitting in among furry circles. Now the cool thing is if you’ve been listening to the show for the past few weeks, and if you have, hopefully, you’re subscribed wherever you get your podcasts, you’ve actually already learned a few of the most important terms that relate to the furry fandom. Things like fursuits, conventions, and fursonas are some of the foundational pieces of the furry vocabulary. And even though a lot of the words that we’ll go over will also end up having an entire episode dedicated to them, there are a lot of words that furries say that don’t really warrant that level of an explanation, so we’re going to get them out of the way here so you don’t have to look them up on your own later on. Some of these words are fun to say while others are a little more awkward and honest cringy (which, as much as I despise the word cringe, I feel like it’s an appropriate description here), but once you start hearing these terms being thrown around in conversion, it will for sure help you feel more like you’re a part of the club. Now before we immediately dive into the deep end here, I do have my limits, and we’re not going to be covering all the terms that are out there for a couple of reasons. Primarily, the furry vocabulary grows with the fandom, with new words being ushered in as older terms get phased out, meaning there may be some words that I haven’t even heard of yet and I can’t really explain what I don’t know. But the other big reason is that, for right now, I’m staying away from the NSFW side of the fandom. Oh in fact here’s a free one; if you don’t know what NSFW stands for, it’s for Not Safe For Work, and typically pertains to the more explicit side of a particular interest, like the furry fandom in this case. And don’t worry, we will eventually cover the more sexually explicit part of the fandom, since trying to hide it is pretty irresponsible in my opinion. I’m just still working on how I want to go about tackling that aspect of the furry fandom while still keeping the broad audience that I prefer to have for this show. But I already got ahead of myself with defining terms you may not know, so let’s take a quick break and when we come back, we’ll go over the list of terms that I have and explain their definitions and their appropriate contexts! I know, quick first segment this episode, and honestly this episode might be on the shorter side anyway but the next part should be a lot of fun. Stay tuned, we’ll be right back.

 

Alright, we’re back. So now that you know a little bit about why furries have their dialect, let’s go over some of the more popular terms that you may hear when talking with other furries. I have a list of terms here that I broke down into a few categories, and the first category I have describes words for different actions that furries do.

 

Actions


Art Terms


Convention Stuff: There’s a few terms related to conventions that I wanted to go over and I’ll start by actually talking about conventions themselves.


Fursuit Stuff: Let’s wrap up with some fursuit related terms.


But yeah, that’s all the terms I had listed that I thought were important to go over. Again it’s not an exhaustive list, but I think it gives you or anyone else new to the fandom a good base to start talking like a furry. Hopefully you didn’t find most of them too weird, but now you have a whole list of new terms and vocabulary to use when talking to other members of the furry fandom, and that vocabulary is known as furry slang!

Alright, that’s it for this episode of Furry, Explained! Thank you so much for tuning in and listening, I really hope you enjoyed it and maybe learned a few new things today. As always if you want to continue the conversation about furry slang, or have any other feedback for the show, make sure to find and follow me on Twitter. I’m @FinnThePanther and a link to my Twitter is down in the show description. If you do like the show but don’t know how to support it, well the best thing you can do is to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! If you’re on iTunes or Apple Podcasts, make sure to give the show a rating and a review as well. You can also tell people about the show, and I’d greatly appreciate it if you did that as well. Thank you in advance for doing so and we’ll be back next week for another episode of Furry, Explained, but until then, stay wild out there. Peace.