Gaming glossary
Smurf, KDA, eco round, honing: the words games never stop to explain. Look one up, or browse the lot from A to Z.
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Ninja Defuse
A ninja defuse is defusing the bomb or spike while enemies are still alive and nearby, relying on them not noticing until it is too late to stop you. It is one of the highest risk,...
NT
NT stands for nice try, a short piece of chat used after a teammate makes an attempt that fails. It is one of the most common callouts in team shooters, and depending on timing and...
One Trick
A one trick is a player who plays a single character, champion or agent almost exclusively, often for hundreds or thousands of games. The abbreviation OTP stands for One Trick Pony...
1v9
1v9 means carrying a game single-handedly, with the joke being that you are playing against nine other people: the five enemies and the four teammates actively getting in your way....
KAST
KAST stands for Kill, Assist, Survived, Traded. It measures the percentage of rounds where you did at least one of those four things, which makes it the clearest single number for...
MSI
MSI stands for Mid-Season Invitational, Riot's international League of Legends tournament held partway through the competitive year. It brings together the best teams from every ma...
A
Ace
An ace means one player killing all five enemies in a single round. Valorant marks it on the scoreboard and in the round summary, and it counts only if every elimination is yours,...
ACS
ACS stands for Average Combat Score in Valorant. It is your total combat score divided by the number of rounds played, and it sits as the first stat column on the scoreboard. ACS r...
AFK
AFK stands for away from keyboard. In gaming it describes a player who is still connected to the match but is no longer controlling their character, either because they physically...
Aimbot
Aimbot is cheat software that automatically points a player's crosshair at an opponent, usually by reading enemy positions straight from the game's memory. It is most common in FPS...
Augment
Augment in Teamfight Tactics is a permanent bonus you choose from three offered options, and you pick one at three separate points in every game. Augments change economy, combat st...
Autofill
Autofill is the system that assigns you a role you did not select, so queues keep moving when too many players want the same position. You queue mid and secondary top. Champion sel...
B
Baron
Baron Nashor is the most powerful neutral objective on Summoner's Rift. Killing it grants your whole team a temporary buff that boosts stats and, more importantly, empowers nearby...
Battle Pass
A battle pass is a seasonal reward track that hands out cosmetics as you play. It runs for a fixed season, usually splits into a free track and a paid premium track, and rewards ar...
Bloom
Bloom in Valorant is the way your bullet spread grows the longer you hold the trigger, so shots land in a widening circle around the crosshair instead of exactly on it. It is why t...
Blue Side
Blue Side in League of Legends is the team that spawns in the bottom left corner of Summoner's Rift. Blue Side gets first pick in ranked draft, sees the map from the standard camer...
BM
BM stands for bad manners. In gaming it describes any action meant to disrespect, mock or humiliate another player rather than to win the game, from emote spamming over a corpse to...
Boosting
Boosting is the practice of raising an account's rank or rating with the help of a stronger player, either by that player logging into the account or by playing alongside it in duo...
C
Carousel
Carousel in Teamfight Tactics is the shared draft round where every player walks onto a rotating ring and grabs one champion holding an item. Pick order runs from lowest health to...
CD Key
A CD key is a code that activates a game or add-on on a platform account. The name survives from physical discs, but today a key is a string you redeem on Steam, Epic Games, Battle...
Challenger
Challenger is the highest rank in League of Legends, sitting above Grandmaster and reserved for a fixed number of the highest LP players on each server. It is not a threshold you c...
Chaos Orb
A Chaos Orb is a currency item in Path of Exile that rerolls the modifiers on a rare item, and it doubles as the standard unit of trade between players. Path of Exile has no gold:...
Comp
Comp is short for composition and means the specific set of units, traits and items you build in a Teamfight Tactics game. A comp is defined by its carry, the traits it activates a...
Counter-Strafing
Counter-strafing means tapping the opposite movement key to stop your character instantly before firing. Valorant applies a heavy accuracy penalty while moving, so stopping fully i...
Cracked
Cracked means a player who is extremely good, usually to an unreasonable degree. Calling someone cracked in Fortnite is a compliment about their mechanics, normally their building...
Crossplay
Cross-play is a feature that lets players on different platforms play together in the same match, so a PC player can queue with someone on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch or mobile. It i...
Crowd Control
Crowd control, usually shortened to CC, is any effect that limits what a champion can do, from a small slow to a full stun. CC is the currency of teamfights in League of Legends, b...
CS
CS stands for creep score and counts every minion and jungle monster you have killed. It is the main source of gold in League of Legends, it appears next to your KDA on the scorebo...
CT
CT stands for Counter-Terrorist and means the defending side. Valorant officially calls that team the Defenders, but the CS terminology carried over with the players, so callouts l...
D
Deathmatch
Deathmatch in Valorant is a free for all mode where 14 players fight without abilities and the first to 40 kills, or the highest score when the timer ends, wins. Everyone respawns...
Debuff
Debuff is a temporary negative effect that weakens a character by lowering stats, restricting movement or blocking abilities. It is the opposite of a buff, it almost always runs on...
Decay
You hit Diamond in March, life gets busy, you take three weeks off. You come back and the client shows Emerald. Nothing was hacked and nothing broke. That is decay doing exactly wh...
Demotion
Sitting at 0 LP is the worst feeling on the ranked ladder. Every game is a coinflip between climbing back to safety and watching the client take the division you spent a week earni...
Dragon
Dragons are the neutral objectives in the bottom half of the river, and each one grants your team a permanent stacking buff. They are also the path to Dragon Soul, awarded after yo...
Duelist
Duelist is the Valorant agent role built to take opening duels and enter sites first. Duelists have self sufficient abilities that create their own space, they are expected to carr...
E
Eco
Eco is short for economy round and means a round where you deliberately spend almost nothing, saving credits so the whole team can afford rifles next round. In Valorant an eco roun...
Econ
Econ is short for economy and means how you manage gold in Teamfight Tactics. The core of it is interest: you earn extra gold each round based on how much you have saved, capped at...
Elo
You finish a game with a clean scoreline, you win, and the client hands you 14 LP. Your duo, same lobby, same result, banks 27. Nothing about that is a bug. You are just looking at...
Elo Boost
Elo boost means having a stronger player raise the rank on your account, either by playing it directly or by queueing alongside you. The name comes from the Elo rating system, the...
Elo Hell
Four losses in a row. Positive KDA in all four. A jungler who never left the top side, a mid laner who queued up tilted from the last game, a bot lane that lost lane by three minut...
Escrow
Escrow means a marketplace holds the buyer's payment until delivery is confirmed, releasing it to the seller only once the account, item or currency has actually arrived. It is the...
F
F2P
F2P stands for free to play. It describes a game you can download and play in full without buying it, with the revenue coming from optional purchases instead of a price tag. League...
FF
FF stands for forfeit and means surrendering the match. Typing /ff in chat opens a team vote, and if enough teammates agree the game ends immediately with a loss. The term came fro...
Frag
Frag means a kill in a shooter. One frag is one enemy eliminated, and the word doubles as a verb, so fragging is the act of getting kills. It comes from military slang and entered...
Funneling
Funneling in League of Legends was a strategy where an entire team fed gold and experience into one hyper carry, usually by pairing a support with a jungle item alongside a mid lan...
G
Gank
Gank means a surprise attack on an enemy who is outnumbered, usually when the jungler arrives in a lane to turn a one versus one into a two versus one. A successful gank produces a...
Gold
Gold is the standard in game currency of most MMOs and RPGs, earned through questing, farming and trading rather than bought from the developer. It funds gear, consumables, craftin...
GP
GP stands for gold pieces, the currency of Old School RuneScape. It is earned through skilling, bossing and flipping on the Grand Exchange, and it prices everything in the game, fr...
Griefing
Griefing means deliberately ruining the experience for other players rather than trying to win. It covers sabotaging your own team, blocking teammates, destroying shared progress o...
H
Hard Carry
Hard carry means winning a match almost single handedly, and it also names the role built to do exactly that. As a verb, hard carrying is what happens when one player's performance...
Hardstuck
"Hardstuck Gold" is one of the most common insults in League of Legends and one of the most common self-descriptions. Same word, wildly different tone depending on who says it. Har...
Hookah
Hookah is a callout on Bind in Valorant, naming the covered room that connects the middle of the map to B site. It is one of the two main attacker routes into B, it sits behind a b...
HUD
HUD stands for heads up display, the layer of information permanently on screen while you play: health, ammo, minimap, abilities, timers and scores. The name comes from aviation, w...
Hyper Roll
Hyper Roll in Teamfight Tactics means spending your entire gold pool early to hunt three star low cost units instead of levelling up. It is also the name of a separate fast TFT que...
I
Initiator
Initiator is the Valorant agent role built to open sites, using abilities that reveal enemies, blind them or force them off an angle so the team can enter safely. Initiators do not...
Inting
Inting is short for intentionally feeding and means dying on purpose to hand the enemy team gold, experience or rounds. The word comes from the phrase intentional feeding in League...
Invade
Invade means entering the enemy jungle, usually to steal camps, place vision or catch the enemy jungler before they can fight back. Invades happen most often in the first thirty se...
J
K
KAST
KAST stands for Kill, Assist, Survived, Traded. It measures the percentage of rounds where you did at least one of those four things, which makes it the clearest single number for...
KDA
KDA stands for kills, deaths and assists. It appears as three numbers on the scoreboard and as a single ratio calculated by adding kills to assists and dividing by deaths. KDA is t...
L
M
Mats
Mats is short for materials, the wood, brick and metal you gather and build with in Fortnite. Every structure you place costs mats, each type has different health and build speed,...
Meta
Meta means the set of strategies, characters and builds that are strongest in a game right now. It is usually explained as most effective tactics available, and it shifts with ever...
Microtransactions
Microtransactions are small real-money purchases made inside a game, usually for cosmetics, currency, battle passes or convenience items. Often shortened to MTX, they replaced the...
MMORPG
MMORPG stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, a genre where thousands of players share one persistent world, build a character over months or years, and progres...
MMR
Riot has never put MMR in the client. There is no tab, no number, no tooltip. Yet it is the single value that decides who you queue with, how much LP each win is worth, and whether...
MOBA
MOBA stands for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, a genre where two teams of five control individual heroes on a fixed map and push toward the enemy base. League of Legends, Dota 2...
MSI
MSI stands for Mid-Season Invitational, Riot's international League of Legends tournament held partway through the competitive year. It brings together the best teams from every ma...
N
Nerf
Nerf means a developer has deliberately made something weaker in a balance update. A nerfed character, weapon or ability deals less damage, costs more, lasts less time or gets a lo...
Ninja Defuse
A ninja defuse is defusing the bomb or spike while enemies are still alive and nearby, relying on them not noticing until it is too late to stop you. It is one of the highest risk,...
Noob
Noob means an inexperienced or unskilled player. It started as shorthand for newbie, meaning someone genuinely new, but drifted into an insult aimed at anyone playing badly regardl...
NT
NT stands for nice try, a short piece of chat used after a teammate makes an attempt that fails. It is one of the most common callouts in team shooters, and depending on timing and...
O
P
Patch
A patch is an update that changes a game after release, delivering bug fixes, balance adjustments, new content or security changes. Patch notes are the published list of what chang...
Pay to Win
Pay to win, usually shortened to P2W, means a game where spending real money gives a direct competitive advantage. That covers stronger gear, faster progression, exclusive characte...
Ping
Ping is the time it takes for data to travel from your computer to the game server and back, measured in milliseconds. Lower is better: under 30 ms feels instant, over 100 ms is no...
Placement Matches
Ten games decide where your season starts. Win most of them and you open somewhere comfortable. Lose most of them and you spend the next two months climbing back to where you were...
POI
POI stands for point of interest, a named location on the Fortnite map. POIs hold the densest loot, the most players and usually a landmark or mechanic of their own, and choosing w...
R
Radiant
Radiant is the highest rank in Valorant, sitting above Immortal and reserved for roughly the top 500 players on each regional leaderboard. It is a position rather than a threshold,...
RMT
RMT stands for real money trading, meaning any exchange of in game goods for real currency. It covers buying gold, selling accounts, trading skins for cash and paying for boosting,...
RNG
RNG stands for Random Number Generator, the system that decides any outcome a game leaves to chance. Critical hits, loot drops, gacha pulls, card draws and enemy spawns all run on...
Robux
Robux is the premium currency of Roblox, used to buy avatar items, game passes, developer products and Limiteds across the whole platform. It works in every experience on Roblox, i...
RP
RP stands for Riot Points, the paid currency in League of Legends. It buys skins, chromas, event passes, champions and name changes, and it cannot be earned through play, which is...
RR
RR stands for Rank Rating, the points that move you up and down the Valorant ladder. Each rank holds 100 RR, winning adds points and losing removes them, and reaching 100 promotes...
S
SBMM
SBMM stands for skill based matchmaking, the system that pairs you with opponents of similar ability instead of at random. It runs on a hidden rating that rises when you win and fa...
Season Reset
Every season the client wipes your badge and hands you placements. Every season the same rumour goes around: everyone is back to zero. They are not, and understanding what actually...
Set
Set in Teamfight Tactics is a complete content overhaul that replaces the champion roster, the traits and usually several core mechanics. Riot ships a new set every few months, eac...
Skin
A skin is a cosmetic item that changes how a character, weapon or vehicle looks without changing how it performs. Skins are the main revenue source for most free to play games, the...
Skins
Skins are cosmetic items that change how a character, weapon or vehicle looks without altering how it performs. They are the most common thing players buy in modern games, and in t...
Smurf
Smurf means an experienced player using a new or low ranked account, so they face opponents far below their real skill level. The word comes from two Warcraft II players who made a...
Spike
The Spike is the bomb attackers carry and plant in Valorant. Attackers win a round by planting it on a site and letting it detonate, defenders win by defusing it or by eliminating...
Split Push
Split pushing means pushing a side lane alone while the rest of your team occupies the enemy somewhere else. It forces the enemy to choose between sending players to stop you or lo...
Storm Surge
Storm Surge is a mechanic that damages players when too many are still alive for the stage of the match. It targets the players who have dealt the least damage, and it exists to st...
Summoner's Rift
Summoner’s Rift is the primary, standard competitive battlefield in Riot Games’ hit Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA), League of Legends (LoL). Designed as a symmetrical 5v5 m...
T
V
V-Bucks
V-Bucks are the premium currency of Fortnite, used to buy skins, emotes, the battle pass and item shop bundles. They are bought with real money or earned in limited amounts through...
VP
VP stands for Valorant Points, the paid currency in Valorant. It buys weapon skin bundles, the battle pass, agent unlocks and Radianite Points, it cannot be earned by playing, and...
VPN
A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, routes your connection through a server in another location before it reaches the game. In gaming that means you can play on servers in other reg...
W
Ward
A ward is a placeable object that grants vision of the area around it, revealing enemies who walk into range. Wards are how teams see ganks coming, set up objectives and track the...
Win Rate
Every tracker leads with it, every player checks it, and almost everyone reads it wrong. A 52 percent win rate looks unremarkable on a profile and is in fact a strong climbing engi...
X
How the glossary is put together
Each entry is filed under the game it belongs to, because the same word rarely survives the trip between an MMO, a shooter and a gacha: a carry is a role in one and a service in another, farming is loot here and gold there. Use the A to Z bar to jump straight to a letter, or open a game's own glossary from the links at the foot of the page. Free to read, no account needed.
Gaming glossary questions
What players ask us about gaming terms, slang and acronyms.
What is a gaming glossary?
A gaming glossary is a dictionary of the words players use: slang like smurf or grind, acronyms like KDA, AFK and DPS, and the stat names every genre invents for itself. Ours is written game by game, because the same word rarely means the same thing in an MMO, a shooter and a gacha. Every entry gives the plain meaning first, then how the term is used in practice.
What do the most common gaming acronyms mean?
GG is good game, said at the end of a match. AFK is away from keyboard. KDA is kills, deaths and assists. DPS is damage per second, and also the role that deals it. MMR is matchmaking rating, the hidden number that decides who you play against. LFG is looking for group. Each of these has its own entry with the detail a short answer leaves out.
How do I find a term for one specific game?
Use the browse by game links on this page. Each game has its own glossary index at /definitions/
, and terms that are not tied to one title sit under General. Inside an index the A to Z bar jumps you straight to the letter you need. Is the glossary free to use?
Yes. Every entry is free to read, with no account and no paywall. We write it because the people buying, selling and boosting on EB24 read the same jargon in listings all day, and a buyer who knows what a term means makes a better decision.
How often are new terms added?
Continuously. New games bring new vocabulary, and live-service titles rename their own systems every season, so entries are added as games launch and edited when a patch changes what a word points at. If a term you looked for is missing, tell support and we will write it up.
What is gaming slang?
Gaming slang is the shorthand players invent so they can talk mid-match: noob, smurf, tryhard, sweaty, clutch, throw, feed, camp, nerf, buff. Most of it started in one game and spread. The list here is the working version, with the meaning a lobby actually assigns each word rather than a dictionary definition of it.
What are the gaming acronyms every player should know?
GG, AFK, LFG, DPS, KDA, MMR, RNG, PvP, PvE, NPC, DLC, FPS, TTK, CC, AoE, ETA on a trade. Twenty of them cover most chats. Each has its own entry explaining what the letters stand for and when the word is used, because half the confusion comes from a term meaning one thing in a shooter and another in an MMO.
What do esports terms like meta, patch and nerf mean?
The meta is whatever the strongest way to play is right now. A patch is the update that changes it. A nerf makes something weaker, a buff makes it stronger, and a rework rebuilds it. Together they explain why the champion, gun or unit everyone used last month is suddenly nobody's pick, and why guides go stale so fast.
Why does the same word mean different things in different games?
Because genres borrow words and bend them. A carry is a role in a MOBA and a service in a marketplace listing. Farming is killing monsters for loot in an MMO and holding a lane for gold in League. That is why each entry is filed under the game it belongs to instead of one flat dictionary.