Word of the gamers

Most gamers around the world know the terms or slang about the games they play. Be it best browser games or multiplayer games, players often find themselves in a situation where they need to convey any info to their teammates quickly. Moreover, yelling long sentences amid matches doesn’t help anyone on your team; and this is where gaming slang comes into play.

While many gaming terms or slang are prevalent in most games, some gaming terms are limited to games of specific genres. Well, without wasting any more time, let’s get straight to the list of the most common gaming terms or slang.

Most common gaming slangs every gamer should know

Asking your friend what a term means during the game can disturb the flow of the game. Instead, you can refer to this guide whenever you hear a new term, after your gaming session, of course.

1. AFK

AFK gaming slang/term means away from the keyboard. Typing AFK in-game chat during a match lets your teammates know that you won’t be available to play for a while.

2. GG

GG gaming slang means good game. Mostly used at the end of online multiplayer matches to let your teammates and opponents know that you had a good game and enjoyed playing with the lot.

3. Smurf

These are not the little blue people you watched growing up. Smurf refers to a player with a high skill set in gaming terms who competes with players of low skill set via a new “smurf account” or someone else’s account.

Unfortunately, if you’re one of the tormented lower-skill set players, Gargamel can’t save you from these smurfs.

4. Aimbot

Aimbot refers to illegal software which grants perfect aim to the player using it. Mostly used in online multiplayer first-person shooter games like CS: GO. Sometimes also called auto-aim, as the bot automatically resets the aim as soon as an enemy player enters the frame.

5. Camping

In gaming, camping refers to the tactic where a player sits in a strategically advantageous position in the game map.

6. Bot

The gaming term Bot refers to a character that is controlled by a computer. In most games, bots are non-playable characters.

7. Buff/Nerf

In gaming slang, Buff is when a weapon or tool is rendered with good stats with the latest updates making it good for use. On the other hand, Nerf is when a weapon is deemed inferior to other weapons with inferior stats.

8. Toxic

In gaming slang, Toxic’s phrase refers to a player who is irritated or rude to his teammates or the opposite team. More often than not, these toxic players make the environment of a match unplayable by simply yelling or saying mean things.

9. Bullet Sponge

Bullet sponge is another gaming slang pointed to a non-playable character who is hard to kill. These characters take many bullets to die, thus the slang- bullet sponge.

10. Cheesing

In gaming, Cheesing is a strategy that requires minimal skill or knowledge from the players part to defeat an enemy. Players who cheese is often found exploiting bugs or glitches in the game or repeatedly performing the same set of moves to win a boss fight.

11. Cooldown

Cooldown refers to the minimum time limit that a player must wait to use a particular ability again in the game. This gaming term refers to the time in which the ability of a character recharges again for use.

12. DLC

A gaming term refers to the in-game content made available by the developers after the launch of a game. DLC stands for downloadable content, and it can either be paid or free. DLC often includes new locations or characters added to the game.

13. Easter Egg

An easter egg is a hidden message; it could be in any form inside a game. It can be an image, a video, or even a hidden feature in the gameplay. Easter eggs are hard to find, but finding one is always worth it.

14. Grinding

In gaming, Grinding is when a player does repetitive tasks to gain experience points or XP. There can be multiple reasons for grinding to collect XP, some games offer in-game purchases via XP, or it could be to progress through the game quickly.

15. HUD

HUD means heads-up display; in gaming, HUD or the status bar shows a character’s health and other important information that helps with the gameplay.

16. K/D

K/D, or Kill/Death ratio is one of the stats of a player, which shows the number of kills per death.

17. Lag

In online gaming, Lag refers to the delay between the input (action of the player) and the output (reaction of the in-game character).

18. Ragequit

Ragequit is when a player leaves an ongoing match because of anger or frustration of losing. You might have seen some videos on the internet of some gamers smashing their keyboards or controllers in anger; That’s ragequitting, another gaming term you should steer clear of.

19. OP

The gaming term OP means overpowered; OP is used in connection to a strong in-game weapon or a player who alone can take on multiple players.

20. TTK

“Time to kill” is gaming slang, which refers to the average time taken to kill an enemy player in a gunfight.

21. Poggers

Poggers is a gaming slang mostly limited to the gaming streaming service Twitch. The slang poggers is used to express excitement or excess joy.

22. Instalock

Instalock is a gaming slang for multiplayer games meaning the process of instantly locking down a character in the character selection screen so that no other player can choose it.

23. Pwned

This gaming slang is the word “Owned,” and due to the proximity of O and P keys, they’re interchanged. In gaming, Pwned means to dominate enemy players in a match with good skills and gameplay.

24. Clutch

Clutch is when a player outnumbered in a match takes down the opposing players one by one and wins the round.

25. Ganking

Ganking is a gaming slang most commonly used in MMORPGs; it refers to the act of multiple players teaming up and taking on one or more players to eliminate them.

26. Res

This particular gaming slang is restricted to competitive FPS multiplayer games where you can review your fallen teammates using certain characters. For example, games like Valorant and Rogue Company see a considerable usage of this slang.

27. Feeding

Feeding is when the opponent team repeatedly kills you in a fight every round. This can be avoided by sticking with your teammates and helping them or changing your position and tactics.

28. Throwing

Throwing refers to when a teammate intentionally ignores their teammates and goes near the enemies with the intent to die by standing and not shooting. Players start throwing when they want others to surrender or quit the game or when there’s a disagreement between them on a particular topic.

29. FPS

FPS is a widely-known term and stands for Frames Per Second. As the name suggests, the more framerate you get, the smoother your gaming experience will be. However, other factors such as internet latency and hardware latency are important too; more FPS, while it enhances your gaming experience, doesn’t make you better at a game.

30. NPC

A non-player character (NPC), as the name suggests, is a character that you cannot control. Most NPCs in games have important roles to play for you to progress in the game’s storyline.

31. AAA

AAA doesn’t stand for anything, rather, it’s used to denote a game’s standard. AAA games are usually published by well-known game development studios with high game development and marketing budgets. Some examples of AAA titles are Elden Ring and God of War: Ragnarok.

32. AoE

Usually combined with the word damage, AoE stands for Area of Effect and generally signifies how vast an ability in a game can span and for how long. For example, Kamisato Ayato and Ganyu in Genshin Impact create a field using their ultimate abilities, which do AoE damage.

33. Latency

Commonly confused with Lag, Latency is the amount of time pressing a key on your computer takes to register movement in the actual game. Latency is measured in milliseconds.

34. Gacha

Taken from real-life Gacha vending machines found in Asian countries like Japan, Gacha is a mechanic that allows you to draw from a pool of items for a chance to win exclusive weapons or characters with different play mechanics.

35. Meta

If you hear people calling a character, team composition, or game mechanic “Meta,” it means that those are the latest, best strategic methods to progress and beat the game.

With Gamers, Slangs keep expanding too

As a newbie gamer, it’s hard to keep track and stay updated about the latest trending words/slangs in a game. There’s no end to game slangs, just like there’s no end to us updating this guide. Hence, we’d suggest bookmarking this so the next time you visit, you’ll find a few more words to stay updated.

We hope that was an interesting read for all the newbie gamers out there trying to get a hang of the well-established gaming slang. With these 35 gaming slang/terms, we put this list to an end; make sure to let us know which gaming slang among these is your favorite and most commonly used.

Like any community in the world, people who play video games have collaboratively created their own language and slang. Many of these words are international, but different languages have different ways of talking about play.

This piece originally appeared 3/29/18.

I’m totally fascinated by the way language influences culture and the way we think. It’s something you could read about for years. (If you fancy dabbling, start with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: the idea that differences in societies can be explained by how language influences the way we think.) The language of gamer culture can be pretty adversarial and aggressive, as well as super-commercial. Anyone who writes about games is constantly brushing up against the limitations of the words we use to describe them (“gameplay,” “mechanics,” “content,” “consumer,” “level” — even “gamer”). I strongly believe that the way that we talk about games actually limits the way we think about them.

It got me wondering: what are the words for gaming like in other languages? I asked linguist and non-English-native friends and people on Twitter to share some of their languages’ gamer slang.

Such is the dominance of the English language in game development across the western world that many languages simply use the English loan word when referring to people who play video games: gamer. Sometimes it’s incorporated into native syntax—in German, there are expressions like “Gamersprache” (a word for “gaming slang”). Dutch gamers use “gamen” as a verb—the literal word for “to play” is “spelen,” but the association there is more with toys and board games.

Even the Japanese use the English loan word ゲーマー (ge-ma). Interestingly, the words “casual gamer” and “core gamer” have also made their way into the European gaming lexicon, though in Japan you can be referred to as a “light gamer,” “middle gamer” or “core gamer.” Italian, French and Spanish all use the words for “player,” the same word you’d use for a sportsman or someone who plays an instrument. Italians use “giocatori;” in French it’s “joueur;” some parts of Spain and Latin America use “jugador,” which is one of my favorites.

In Paraguay, the diminutive word “jueguitos,” which could be interpreted as “little games” and comes across as a little derogatory, has been reclaimed by gamers. Another cool bit of gaming slang from Paraguay: if someone on your team is no good, they might be called a “paquete” or “paquetón”—a package/big package. Geddit? Because you have to carry them.

Lithuanians have a weird word for gaming: “kapoja,” which literally translates to “chop up.” (“I’m gonna chop up Mario Kart, wanna join?”) The Germans have their own words for “gaming” as a verb, too: “zocken,” which comes from an old word for “to risk” or “to gamble,” and the less common but rather cute “daddeln.” In Singapore and South-East Asia, 玩 is the verb for “to play,” but the verb for “to hit” (打)—referring to literally hitting buttons—is also used. In Cantonese it’s the same verb, 打機, “hit the machine.” In Nupe, a Nigerian language, people “throw” games (“che”).

The Danish for gaming, “spille et spil,” is close enough to the term for masturbation (“spille pik,” literally “playing cock”) to have inspired this state-funded advert about online security for teenagers (thanks Lars for that link).

There’s more variation when you look at the different words for finishing, beating or completing a game, and this can reveal some interesting cultural differences. Even in the English-speaking world, North Americans talk about “beating” a game where Brits talk about “finishing” one. In Britain and Ireland, back in the days of arcades, you’d “clock” a game, a phrase which could be traced back to the way that older games simply started again once you finished the last level, like a clock resetting. The French “finish” their games as well (“finir”), though if you blazed through a game, you might say you “torched” it (“torcher”).

Japanese players talk about “conquering” (“攻略する,” pronounced “kouryaku”) or “zenkuri” ( “全クリする,” literally “full clear,” a combination of the character for “all/everything” and a shortening of the English loan work クリア, “clear”). You might also use コンプする—konpu suru—a contraction of the English “complete” with the Japanese “suru,” an all-purpose verb for “to do.” The Dutch “play out” a game (“uitspelen”) and the Portuguese “zero” it (“zerar”). Norwegian uses the word “runde”—to “get around” or “circumvent” a game. Similarly, in Chile the Spanish “dar vuelta” is used, which means “to turn.” Some Norwegians say they “completed a lap” of a game (“Å runde et spill”), and the Swedish “drive” it. The Polish “walk through” games (“przeszedłem grę”), and also “play in a game” rather than “playing a game.”

Not every culture sees games as something to be beaten or conquered. Other languages communicate a less adversarial attitude towards gaming with their words for play. Interestingly, because gamer culture is primarily located online, there’s much less variation between gamer culture and language across the globe than there is in, say, sport, or other primarily offline pursuits—but it also means we speak a shared language. RPG might be an English acronym, but its meaning is understood all over the world.

Thanks so much to everyone on Twitter who contributed their local insight for this article, especially Lars!, Thijs Kaagman, Ben Kaestner-Frenchman, Enrique Bernardou, vegard busk, Elliot Gardner, Anders Lønning, Artur Pasiek, Edward Choy and Umar Kawu. If you’ve got more interesting slang to share, hit up the comments.