Player Piano

sic semper tyrannis

Latin for 'thus always to tyrants' — the phrase attributed to Brutus at Caesar's assassination, and to John Wilkes Booth. In Player Piano it surfaces as a rallying cry against the technocratic elite that has reduced most of humanity to uselessness.

lazaretto

A quarantine station or hospital for people with infectious diseases, historically at ports. Vonnegut uses it to evoke isolation and the way society cordons off those it deems unproductive or dangerous.