It's a Word! It's a Plane! It's Superhero Vocabulary!: Wonder Woman's Superpower Words

This word for a person who wages war has been mostly associated with men, but Wonder Woman isn't the type of princess who needs to be rescued: she's the one doing the rescuing and brawling. Wonder Woman has a lot in common with Princess Leia, another royal type who wasn't afraid to mix it up.

The lasso is mostly associated with cowboys: it's a rope with a loop tied at the end, and a skilled roper can swing the thing so accurately that it lands just right on a bull, or some other critter, to bring it down. Wonder Woman's home of Paradise Island is pretty far from the Wild West, but her main weapon is a lasso—the Lasso of Truth, which has sometimes been called the Magic Lasso and Golden Lasso. When she wraps it around someone, they're forced to tell the truth.

This word is synonymous with heaven: in paradise, there's no more pain, and we can all eat chocolate and pizza all day without ever gaining a pound. Nothing's better than paradise.

Mythology refers to the stories of a group of people, especially stories that explain how the world came to be and what the gods (there are usually a bunch of them) are up to. Wonder Woman's history involves a lot of interaction with mythology: in one version of her origin, she's the daughter of Hippolyta and Zeus. Also, mythology can be used more loosely these days. The back story of a TV show is often called its mythology, and superhero stories are a type of modern mythology too.

This word for a female hero is a little out of fashion, depending on who you ask. Over time, people have tended to throw gendered words in the lexical dumpster, replacing stewardess with flight attendant and actress with actor. But sometimes people want to emphasize the femaleness of a hero, so heroine still has a place in English.

Most heroes fight for justice in some way, but this word is extra-applicable to Wonder Woman, who has been a member of the Justice Society of America (the very first super-team, founded in 1941) and the Justice League of America (an updated version founded in 1960). Unfortunately, Wonder Woman was originally the secretary for the Justice Society, so let's just say American society has evolved a little bit since then.

Psychologists are experts in the field of psychology, and they study human behavior. This word probably seems out of place in a list about Wonder Woman, but it is crucial to her history: Wonder Woman was co-created by psychologist and inventor William Moulton Marston who, besides writing comic books, helped develop a device that's remarkably similar to the lasso of truth: he contributed to the invention of the polygraph, commonly known as the lie detector.

This is the soft stuff sculptors mold into statues. In one version of Wonder Woman's origin, she was made out of clay by the gods.

Something indestructible can't be smashed, broken, crushed, or otherwise annihilated: Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth is indestructible.

A sensation can be a feeling or something exceptional. Many of Wonder Woman’s early adventures were published in Sensation Comics.