Supernatural Vocabulary: Folklore Terms and Everyday Expressions
You watch Supernatural to learn English and end up with a notebook full of monsters, ghosts, lore, and mysterious creatures. Fun? Absolutely. Useful at the supermarket on Tuesday? Less certain.
The trick is to separate two kinds of vocabulary: Lore File language that helps you understand supernatural stories, and Everyday Carry language you can reuse at work, with friends, online, and in ordinary conversations.
Words for stories, legends, claimed supernatural phenomena, and how those stories spread.
Idioms, phrasal verbs, discourse markers, and informal expressions that work far beyond the show.
Some phrases belong in both: the scene may be about a supernatural mystery, but the English itself is completely normal.
1. “Lore” is the story-world knowledge around a subject
The lore changes blog to blog.
Lore means the accumulated stories, traditions, beliefs, or knowledge associated with a subject or community. It can describe old folk traditions, but English speakers also use it for games, fandoms, fictional universes, families, and even workplaces.
“There’s a lot of local lore about the old bridge.”
“I know the game mechanics, but not the lore.”
“Office lore says nobody has ever survived that meeting without coffee.”
In other words, lore is not automatically proof that a story is factual. It names the body of stories or beliefs around it.
2. Folklore, legend, urban legend, and lore are related—but not identical
These are writer-original learning distinctions, not claims about the episode:
| Term | Practical meaning | Writer-original example |
|---|---|---|
| folklore | The broad body of traditional stories, beliefs, customs, sayings, and practices shared by a community. | “The festival draws on regional folklore.” |
| legend | A traditional story connected to a person, place, or event and often told as if it may contain some truth. | “There’s a legend about a hidden tunnel under the castle.” |
| urban legend | A modern story circulated as true or plausible, often without reliable verification. | “That story about the stranger in the back seat is an urban legend.” |
| lore | The accumulated stories or knowledge surrounding a subject. | “The character’s backstory is part of the show’s lore.” |
For language learners, the useful question is not “Which supernatural story is true?” It is “What kind of story-language is the speaker using?”
3. “Date back” tells you how old a story or tradition is
date back a couple years.
Date back means have existed since an earlier time. It is useful far beyond folklore:
Writer-original: “The building dates back to the 1800s.”
Writer-original: “This family tradition dates back three generations.”
Writer-original: “The bug dates back to the first version of the app.”
Use date back to + point in time or date back + period depending on the sentence.
4. “Make up” can mean invent, not reconcile after an argument
I-I made up Thinman.
Here, made up means invented. That sense is extremely useful:
Writer-original: “He made up an excuse.”
Writer-original: “Did you make that story up?”
Writer-original: “The name is completely made up.”
Do not confuse it with another common sense: make up with someone = become friendly again after an argument.
5. The same story can spread, change, and become “lore”
When a story is retold by many people, details can shift. That is one reason the words lore, legend, and urban legend are useful even when you are not discussing ghosts. They let you talk about how stories circulate, not just whether you believe them.
Lore File question: Where did the story begin?
Lore File question: How old is it?
Lore File question: Who keeps repeating it?
Lore File question: Do different versions disagree?
Those are media-literacy questions as much as folklore questions.
6. Everyday Carry: “acting up” works for machines and people
Uh... Electricity acting up
Acting up means malfunctioning or causing trouble. It can describe technology, a body part, or behavior.
Writer-original: “My laptop is acting up again.”
Writer-original: “My knee’s been acting up all week.”
Writer-original: “The kids were acting up during dinner.”
This is the kind of expression worth stealing from a supernatural investigation and carrying straight into real life.
7. “On the fritz” is a more colorful way to say broken
TV on the Fritz?
On the fritz means not working properly. It is informal and a little colorful.
Neutral: “The printer isn’t working.”
Informal: “The printer’s acting up.”
More idiomatic: “The printer’s on the fritz.”
You probably would not use it in a formal technical incident report, but it is perfectly natural in conversation.
8. “Out of curiosity” makes a question softer
Out of curiosity, uh...
Out of curiosity introduces a question as something you are wondering about rather than demanding to know.
Writer-original: “Out of curiosity, why did you choose that option?”
Writer-original: “Out of curiosity, how long have you lived here?”
It is useful in work conversations because it lowers the pressure of a follow-up question.
9. “Dead weight” is useful—but insulting when aimed at people
they were dead weight.
Dead weight means a burden that contributes little useful value. It is vivid, but calling a person dead weight is harsh.
Safer workplace repair: “They weren’t contributing enough to the project.”
Use the idiom freely for abstract burdens: “That unused software became dead weight in the budget.”
10. “Here’s the deal” announces the bottom line
So, here's the deal.
Here’s the deal means “here are the essential facts / this is the practical situation.” It is direct, spoken English.
Writer-original: “Here’s the deal: we can finish today, but only if we cut one feature.”
Writer-original: “Here’s the deal. I can lend you the car, but I need it back by six.”
11. “We’ll bite” means “okay, tell us more”
Okay. We'll bite.
We’ll bite is informal. It means you will engage with someone’s claim, question, or bait and hear what comes next.
Writer-original: “You said you found a way to cut the cost in half? Okay, I’ll bite—how?”
It often carries a little skepticism: I’m not convinced yet, but go on.
12. “Big whoop” dismisses something as unimpressive
Big whoop.
Big whoop roughly means “so what?” or “that’s not impressive.” It is casual and dismissive.
Friend bragging playfully: maybe.
Colleague presenting serious work: probably not.
Safer alternatives: “I’m not sure that changes much,” or “That doesn’t seem like a major difference.”
13. “Bail on” means abandon the plan
you know, bail on this?
Bail on something means leave, quit, or abandon it. You can also bail on someone, meaning fail to show up or leave them without expected support.
Writer-original: “Are you still coming, or are you going to bail on us?”
Writer-original: “We bailed on the hike because of the weather.”
14. “Eat your words” means events prove you wrong
all the haters eat their words.
Eat your words means be forced to admit something you said was wrong because events proved otherwise.
Writer-original: “He said the product would fail, but six months later he had to eat his words.”
15. “Die-hard” means extremely committed
that are pretty die-hard
Die-hard describes extremely loyal or committed fans, supporters, or believers.
Writer-original: “She’s a die-hard football fan.”
Writer-original: “Even die-hard users complained about the redesign.”
The phrase is much more everyday than supernatural.
16. “Cut the crap” means stop evading—but it is blunt
Right here, right now, cut the crap.
Cut the crap means stop joking, lying, evading, or talking nonsense and be direct.
Blunt: “Cut the crap. What happened?”
Neutral writer-original repair: “Let’s be direct. What actually happened?”
Professional repair: “Let’s focus on the facts.”
17. “Grasping at straws” is for weak last-resort ideas
Just grasping at straws here,
Grasping at straws means trying weak or unlikely possibilities because you are running out of better explanations or options.
Writer-original: “Maybe restarting it for the fifth time will work, but I’m grasping at straws.”
Writer-original: “We have no evidence for that theory. We’re just grasping at straws.”
18. “Speaking of which” connects one topic to the next
Oh, by the way, speaking of which,
Speaking of which means “that reminds me of a related thing.” It is a smooth conversational bridge.
Writer-original: “The meeting moved to Friday. Speaking of which, have you booked the room?”
19. “Gone viral” and “blew up” overlap—but not perfectly
gone viral, if we still had it?
Go viral specifically describes content spreading quickly and widely online.
And it blew up.
Blow up can also mean suddenly become popular or attract massive attention, but it has many other meanings too: explode, become angry, enlarge an image, or make a problem much bigger.
Writer-original: “The clip went viral overnight.”
Writer-original: “Her post blew up after a celebrity shared it.”
20. “The tables have turned” means the advantage reversed
but the tables have turned, my friends.
The tables have turned means the situation has reversed, especially who has the advantage.
Writer-original: “Last year we were asking them for help. Now they’re asking us—the tables have turned.”
21. “Strike gold” means find unexpected success
If I hadn't struck gold with Thinman,
Strike gold literally evokes discovering gold, but figuratively it means find something unexpectedly successful or valuable.
Writer-original: “The studio struck gold with that series.”
Writer-original: “We struck gold with the first candidate we interviewed.”
22. “From the get-go” means from the very beginning
from the get-go.
From the get-go is informal and means from the start.
Writer-original: “The plan was risky from the get-go.”
Neutral alternative: “from the beginning.”
Sorting drill: Lore File, Everyday Carry, or Both?
Sort these before opening the answer:
lore · urban legend · date back · made up · on the fritz · grasping at straws · blew up · gone viral · die-hard · the tables have turned
Show one useful classification
Lore File: lore, urban legend.
Everyday Carry: on the fritz, grasping at straws, die-hard, the tables have turned.
Both: date back, made up, blew up, gone viral. These can describe how a legend develops, but they are ordinary English used in many other situations.
One more distinction: recognition vocabulary vs active vocabulary
You do not need every genre term in your active speaking vocabulary. A useful rule:
Recognition-first: specialized folklore, monster, paranormal-investigation, or show-lore terms.
Production-first: expressions you can reuse tomorrow—acting up, out of curiosity, here’s the deal, bail on it, grasping at straws, speaking of which, blew up, from the get-go.
This keeps your vocabulary notebook from becoming a museum of cool phrases you never actually say.
Turn a scene into a two-column vocabulary workout
With FunFluen, hide the subtitle before an unfamiliar line and predict the category first: Lore File or Everyday Carry? Then reveal the subtitle and check.
For speaking/guess-the-dialogue practice, paraphrase the everyday expression in plain English before you see the character’s wording. If the line contains genre vocabulary, focus on recognition and context instead of forcing it into your daily speech.
The rule to remember
Monster vocabulary helps you follow the story. Everyday expressions help you speak English.
Keep both—but label them differently. Learn the lore so the episode makes sense, then carry the reusable English out of the episode with you.
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