What’s up, choom? I’m here to get you ready for the mean streets of Night City with a list of Cyberpunk 2077 slang so you know exactly what everyone is talking about. Don’t be a gonk and read along.
Cyberpunk Slang
- Afterlife: A bar that was once a morgue - now home to the mercenaries of Night City.
- Air hypo: A hypodermic needle of the future, probably filled with adrenaline. Used to shake injured people awake.
- Amped-out: The comedown after taking lots of stimulants.
- Blackwall: A company called NetWatch blocked off the old web - which was overrun by rogue AI - with a kind of security blanket. That firewall became known as the Blackwall and now separates the new web from the old.
- Bourgie: From the word “bourgeois”, meaning the middle classes.
- Borg: “Adam Smasher is a borg,” is something you might say. It refers to someone who is more machine than human.
- Braindance: A VR recreation of someone’s memories that you can relive, complete with full sensory recall. Braindances are mainly used for porn in the world of Cyberpunk, but they’re predominantly a detective mechanic in Cyberpunk 2077.
- Chippin' In: The name of a single from Johnny Silverhand’s group, Samurai. It can also mean connecting with a group of people or hooking up to a machine.
- Choomba: Like “chum”. A friend. A choom.
- Corpo: Someone who works for the corporations.
- Credchip: A card with bank data or currency on it.
- Culture vulture: A journalist, also referred to as a “media”.
- Cyberware: The augmentations and implants a person has.
- Cyberdeck: The RAM and other augments that allow people to hack anything connected to the web.
- Doll: A kind of sex worker who turns off their consciousness to fulfill the client’s fantasies.
- 'Dorph: Endorphins - stimulants used to get the edge in battle or increase brain function for hacking.
- Eddies: The currency of night city - eurodollars. Also called “eds” and “scratch”.
- Edgerunner: A mercenary outlaw who lives on the fringes - the edge - of society.
- Fixer: Someone with connections and who may have jobs for mercenaries.
- Flatline: Kill.
- Gato: Someone who is cool. “Dex DeShawn was gato right up to the point he tried to flatline me.”
- Gonk: A moron, an idiot. “That NPC walking into the wall is a gonk.”
- Input: The taker in a romantic relationship. The opposite of an output.
- Joytoy: A sex worker.
- Kibble: Mass-produced, processed food.
- NCPD: Cops - Night City Police Department.
- Netrunner: Someone who interfaces with the web and interacts with it inside a virtual plane.
- Output: The giver in a romantic relationship. The opposite of an input.
- Ripperdoc: The street doctors of Night City, who fit people with illegal augmentations and military hardware.
- Rockerboy/rockergirl: Politically-charged musicians - the punk in Cyberpunk.
- Screamsheets: Personalised newspapers for the digital age.
- Samurai: Can either refer to Johnny Silverhand’s band, Samurai, or a type of corpo enforcer.
- Scratch: Eddies. Money.
- Solo: A lone mercenary who specialises in combat.
- Stim: Drugs and boosters. Like ‘dorphs.
- Terminal: A physical interface.
- Virtus: Virtual reality experiences. Braindances.