Pokémon

alternative informal Pokemon

1. A Japanese media franchise featuring fictional creatures that are captured by humans and trained to battle each other.

   The organization has also named three newly discovered, rare beetles after characters from Pokémon – the Japanese anime series that spawned an entire franchise of video games, toys and trading cards.

   2021 September 15, Hannah Ryan, “RuPaul has a new namesake – and it’s a fabulous, rainbow-colored fly”, in CNN, archived from the original on 05 Feb 2022

nonstandard plural Pokémons · alternative informal Pokemon

1. A pocket monster; a fictional creature from the universe of the Pokémon franchise.

   Professor Oak, the world's leading Pokémon expert, is at once a genius and a bumbling, absent-minded professor

   2009, Mark I. West, The Japanification of children's popular culture: from godzilla to miyazaki, page 59

   4 more examples

   Pokémons are the latest and adamantly conformist craze among middle-childhood boys. The theme of the video games that started the craze is, as usual, the triumph of good over evil. The hero is a child, twelve-year-old Ash. His goal is to capture all 150-plus nonhuman creatures called Pokémons, train them to be good, and use them to capture the remaining wicked Pokémons that so far have escaped. In the games, Ash is not your ally: he is you. Each of the Pokémons has its own sort of power which, after conversion, accrues to Ash’s (your) favor.

   2001, Sara Stein, “Games They Play”, in Noah’s Children: Restoring the Ecology of Childhood, New York, N.Y.: North Point Press, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 248

   Game strategy (and tactics) are full of such learning about real life, like the rules, the strategy in games needs to be lifelike for the games to make sense, even if the characters, such as Pokémons, are purely imaginary.

   2005, Marc Prensky, “Computer Games and Learning: Digital Game-Based Learning”, in Joost Raessens, Jeffrey Goldstein, editors, Handbook of Computer Game Studies, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, →ISBN, part II (Design), page 106, column 2

   He had been delighted when his mother said, Just leave everything as it is. Not even his bed was made. He could see that little kid’s mess, his clothes, his Pokémons, his old Winnie Dubdoub, his Spiderman^([sic]) poster; and the truck, alone in the empty house for days now, nearly two weeks.

   2005, Eva Sallis, The Marsh Birds, Crows Nest, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin, →ISBN, page 15

   The beetles are named Binburrum articuno, Binburrum moltres and Binburrum zapdos after three rare Pokémon: Articuno, Moltres and Zapdos.

   2021 September 15, Hannah Ryan, “RuPaul has a new namesake – and it’s a fabulous, rainbow-colored fly”, in CNN, archived from the original on 05 Feb 2022