General Products: A company owned by Piersons puppeteers that sold mostly spacecraft hulls. Dissolved two hundred years ago.

The Great Ocean: One of two salt seas on the Ringworld, measuring six hundred times the surface area of the Earth.

Grippy: An all purpose hand tool.

Home: A world of human space, unusually Earthlike.

Hot Needle of Inquiry: Second ship (of Experimentalist design) to reach the Ringworld.

Human space: The region of stars explored by humanity.

Known space: The region of the universe known to explorers who communicate with humanity.

LE (Legal Entity): Any entity (human or not, organic or not) legally entitled to civil rights.

Long Shot: Prototype Quantum II hyperdrive spacecraft, first ship to visit the galactic core.

Lying Bastard: First ship (of Experimentalist design) to reach the Ringworld.

Map of Earth (or Mars, Kzin, Kdatlyno, etc.): The Great Ocean is scattered with maps of nearby inhabited worlds at one-to-one scale, complete with local ecologies as of the time the Ringworld was built.

Meteor defense: Ringworld systems can cause a solar flare, and a superthermal laser effect within the flare. Energy output is awesome, but the effect is slow.

N-child: Lineal descendant.

Outsider hyperdrive or Hyperdrive: A means of faster-than-light travel common in known space.

Patriarchy: The Kzinti interstellar empire.

Port: To the left as one looks spinward.

Quantum II hyperdrive: An advanced experimental faster-than-light system, puppeteer designed, first seen in "At the Core." One Ringworld day under QII hyperdrive = 1440 light years.