Gamer Dictionary: 60 Terms You'd Be Embarrassed Not to Know

Gamer slang is basically its own language. A newcomer joins a match and someone's already typing "don't feed, push mid, and don't forget wards." To understand your teammates at a glance and not slow the team down by asking again, we've put together a glossary of the most common terms — from general ones to the genre-specific lingo of shooters and MOBAs. Save it and come back whenever you hit a word you don't know.

General terms

• GG (good game) — written at the end of a match; sometimes sarcastic after a loss.
• EZ (easy) — an easy win; "ez catch" means an easy victory.
• Noob — a newcomer, or just a player who plays badly.
• Pro — a professional or a very strong player.
• Carry — to drag the team to a win on your own.
• Throw / loss — a defeat, often due to the team's mistakes.
• Reroll — to re-enter or re-create (a match, a hero, a lobby).
• AFK (away from keyboard) — a player has stepped away and isn't controlling their character.
• Lag — delays caused by ping or weak hardware.
• Nerf / buff — weakening / strengthening something via a patch.
• Meta — the strongest tactics and heroes on the current patch.
• OP / imba — an imbalanced, overpowered hero, item or tactic.

Ranking and matchmaking

• Ranked — the rated mode where your rank goes up or down.
• Solo queue — playing ranked alone, with random teammates.
• Duo / trio / party — a group of 2, 3 or more players.
• ELO hell — a rank you supposedly can't climb out of because of weak teammates. More on this in the guide how to climb rank in solo queue.
• Smurf — an experienced player on a low-rank account.
• Boost — raising someone else's rank for money (often tied to scams — see our piece on scams in gaming).
• MMR — the hidden rating used to match you against opponents.
• Decay — a rank drop for not playing for a long time.

Shooters (CS2, Valorant, Apex)

• Clutch — winning a round alone against multiple opponents.
• Ace — one player killing the entire enemy team in a round.
• Entry (entry frag) — the first push and first kill of the round.
• Pre-fire — shooting at a corner before the enemy appears, by timing.
• Spray / recoil control — firing in bursts while compensating for spread.
• Flash / smoke — a flashbang / a smoke grenade.
• Rush — a fast, coordinated push onto a site by the whole team.
• Headshot (HS) — a hit to the head with bonus damage.
• Eco / force — a round with no buy / a partial buy.
• Peek — to lean out of cover for a trade.

If you want to dig deeper into roles and ranks, start with the guide to finding a teammate in CS2.

MOBAs (Dota 2, LoL)

• Carry / core — the hero that farms and wins the late game.
• Support — the support hero (wards, healing, crowd control).
• Last-hit / deny — finishing off your own creep / denying the enemy the kill.
• Farm — gathering gold and experience from creeps.
• Gank — a surprise attack on a lane to score a kill.
• Push / save — pressuring a lane / rescuing an ally.
• Mid / top / bot / jungle — positions and zones on the map.
• Roaming — the support moving around the map for ganks.
• Teamfight — a full-on team-versus-team brawl.
• Feed / feeder — handing kills to the enemy by dying constantly.
• Tilt — the state where anger makes you play worse. How to fight it — in the guide how to stop tilting.

To round out the theory on support play, check out our piece 10 rules of a non-infuriating support in Dota 2.

Behavior and communication

• Toxic — a player who insults and annoys the team.
• Flame — verbal aggression in chat or voice.
• Mute — silencing a player so they can't get in the way.
• Report — a complaint against a rule-breaker.
• Leaver — someone who quits before the end, screwing over the team.
• Call — a voice command ("rotate," "fall back").
• Teammate — your partner on the team.

The short version

Slang sinks in on its own after a dozen matches — but a basic glossary saves nerves for you and your team alike. The key thing: don't be shy about asking decent people to clarify — a normal teammate will explain rather than flame. And to have more people like that around you, build your roster deliberately: open the GSPOT catalog and find partners for your game and rank. The service runs in your browser and in Telegram — you could play your first match with a new teammate today.