We have created this page to list commonly used terms that you might find as you look through the site as a whole. For the moment, it contains terms related to plurality, defined below, and will likely grow alongside the rest of the site. For this reason, we recommend revisiting it from time to time. New terms will be added below existing ones, and we will do our best to keep them grouped by subject.
We are a group of beings sharing a physical form here on Earth. Some call that a disorder; we call it wonderful. Many know this state of being as 'plurality', or 'being plural'. We use either term throughout the following pages.
We are not alone; there are others in this world who share the same general experience. Some of these groups call themselves 'systems'; others use other terms. We use 'system' for ourselves.
We generally try to avoid terms explicitly used to refer to beings in a system that wouldn't also be used for everyone else, such as headmates, parts, or alters. We usually tend toward saying things like 'someone in-system' or 'an in-system person/creature/being/etc'.
The process by which one of us gives control over the physical body to another goes by several things. Some call it 'switching'; others call it 'emerging'. We tend to describe the space we inhabit in order to exert control over the body itself 'the front' or simply 'front', and refer to entering and leaving that space as 'taking front' or 'leaving front', respectively.
It is possible for more than one of us to be at front at any given time. The term most widely used to refer to this state is 'co-conscious', sometimes written as 'coconscious'. We tend to skip using the term itself, instead preferring to incorporate the sharing of front into the story in a more descriptive way as part of scene-setting. There may be times, however, in which we do use it, so here it lives.
When we are not in front, we reside in a world that coexists alongside this one. Such an experience is, as you may have guessed, common for systems, though certainly not universal. There are a variety of terms for the worlds themselves, including 'the inside', 'headspace', etc. We tend to skip referring to ours directly wherever possible, though when we can’t we fall back to 'in-system' as a placeholder.
Some systems, including ours, have the experience of some of their population coming from other worlds, dimensions, realms, etc. We've heard the term 'gateway system' applied to those who've had this experience, but don't personally use it because we don't feel like it fully applies. Still, we include it here for the purpose of completeness.