League of Legends has its own language. Lane assignments, ability interactions, and map calls all get compressed into shorthand that experienced players use without thinking. If you're new, returning after a break, or just tired of nodding along when teammates type something you don't understand, this is the reference.
This guide covers 30 terms organized into five categories: stats and damage mechanics, macro strategy, champion roles, in-game chat abbreviations, and ranked concepts. Each entry gives you a clear definition and enough context to use the term correctly.
You don't need to memorize all 30 before your next game. Scan the categories, pick the ones relevant to your role, and come back when new ones come up.
Stats and Damage: Key League of Legends Mechanics
These terms describe how champion stats and debuffs interact with damage. Understanding them makes item purchases and fight decisions make sense instead of feeling arbitrary.
Lethality
Lethality is a stat that ignores a flat amount of the target's armor when calculating your physical damage. Each point of lethality removes one point of effective armor from the target, but it cannot push effective armor below zero. It works best against low-armor targets: 18 lethality on a mage with 30 total armor removes more than half their armor value, but the same 18 lethality on a tank with 200 armor barely registers. Assassins and AD casters build it specifically to burst squishy carries.
Magic Resist (MR)
Magic resistance reduces incoming magic damage by a percentage. The formula is straightforward: 100 MR cuts magic damage in half (50% reduction), and 200 MR reduces it by 66.6%. Every 100 MR doubles your effective health pool against magic sources. MR stacks additively, so each item gives its full value regardless of how much you already have. Build MR items (Kaenic Rookern, Spirit Visage, Force of Nature, Banshee's Veil) when the enemy team is heavy on AP damage.
Ability Haste
Ability Haste reduces how long you wait between ability casts by increasing your casting rate linearly. The formula is CDR% = AH / (100 + AH): 50 AH equals about 33% cooldown reduction, and 100 AH equals 50%. Ability Haste replaced Cooldown Reduction (CDR) in preseason 2021 because CDR had diminishing returns and a hard 40% cap. AH has no practical cap and every additional point provides the same casting-rate benefit, giving more build flexibility.
CC (Crowd Control)
Crowd control is any effect that limits an enemy's ability to move, attack, or cast abilities. Soft CC (slows, silences, blinds) reduces effectiveness without fully stopping a target. Hard CC (stuns, knockups, suppressions, airborne) prevents all action for its duration. Hard CC chains define teamfights: landing a knockup into a stun into a root is how teams convert from "we're even" to "fight over." Supports and engage tanks are the primary CC sources on most teams.
Grievous Wounds
Grievous Wounds is a debuff that reduces all incoming healing and health regeneration received by 40%. It applies through items (Morellonomicon, Thornmail, Mortal Reminder, Executioner's Calling), the summoner spell Ignite, and a handful of champion abilities (Katarina R, Varus E, Singed Q while ulting). GW does not affect shields; shields add temporary health and are a separate system. To counter a healing champion like Soraka, apply GW to the champion being healed, not to Soraka herself.
Macro Strategy Lingo: Wave Management, Map Plays, and Objectives
These are the strategy terms you hear in coaching content and VOD reviews. Most of them describe how to use minion waves and map positioning to generate advantages even when you're not in a fight.
Wave Management
Wave management is the deliberate control of your minion wave: pushing it, holding it near your tower, or building it into a large crash. There are three wave states (freeze, slow push, fast push), and switching between them is the foundation of laning strategy. Poor wave management means leaking CS, missing roam windows, and giving your opponent free turret pressure. Every role that starts in a lane needs to understand all three states.
Freeze
A freeze holds the minion wave just outside your own turret range, denying your opponent CS without letting them stand safely under your tower to farm. To maintain a freeze, you need slightly more enemy minions alive than your own at the wave line, so your side stays disadvantaged and the wave doesn't advance. The payoff: opponents must overextend into dangerous territory to get any gold, setting up kills or gank opportunities. Top lane is the most effective lane to freeze because its length gives more time to maintain the balance.
Slow Push
A slow push builds a large minion wave by damaging enemy minions slowly enough that successive ally waves pile on before the wave crashes. The result is a super-sized crash that the enemy turret and laner must deal with, giving you a window to recall or roam. The slow push works best when timed around cannon waves, which add a durable minion that turrets prioritize first while the rest of the wave deals structure damage freely.
Fast Push / Shove
A fast push clears the enemy wave as quickly as possible, sending your minions into the enemy turret in one sweep. Also called a shove. Once your wave crashes, a brief window opens to recall, roam, or contest an objective before the bounced wave returns and costs you CS. The value of a fast push comes entirely from what you do with that window. If you shove and stand still, you accomplish nothing while your opponent gets a free recall instead.
Roaming
Roaming is when a laner leaves their lane to apply pressure elsewhere on the map. Mid-laners roam most frequently because their central position gives the shortest path to both sides of the map. Supports roam to mid when the bot lane is stable. The prerequisite is always the same: shove or slow-push your wave first so you don't bleed CS while away. A good roam that converts to a kill or summoner spell is worth several waves of missed CS.
Split Push
Split pushing means applying constant pressure alone in a side lane while your teammates focus elsewhere on the map, forcing the enemy to divert one or more players to respond. If they send one person, you win the 1v1 and take structures. If they ignore you, your team fights 4v5. Effective split pushers must be able to duel or escape defenders and need wave-clear to maintain the pressure. Hullbreaker and Teleport are the two items and spells that define the playstyle.
Engage / Disengage
Engage means committing to start a fight, forcing enemies to respond or take losses. Disengage is stopping a fight or preventing an enemy engage from landing. "Hard engage" compositions (Malphite, Amumu, Leona) all-in with irreversible AoE crowd control. "Counter-engage" or disengage compositions (Janna, Braum, Lulu) use knockbacks and shields to react to enemy initiations and protect backline carries. These are team composition archetypes decided at champion select, not individual plays.
Tower Dive
A tower dive is attacking an enemy under their own turret, intentionally taking turret fire to secure a kill. Two mechanics make it dangerous: Reinforced Armor cuts turret damage by 80% when no enemy minions are present (bring a wave), and Warming Up stacks turret damage by 50% per consecutive hit on a champion (up to a 150% bonus). The first shot feels manageable. By the third, you're dead if you haven't secured the kill. Dive only with a minion wave and a health lead that can absorb at least two hits.
Gank
A gank is an ambush on a laner, most often executed by the jungler, with the goal of securing a kill or forcing the enemy to burn summoner spells. The term comes from "gang kill," originating in MMO PvP. A successful gank does not require a kill: forcing the enemy's Flash (about a 5-minute cooldown) or sending them back to base on low health is a good outcome. Gank when the enemy is pushed past the midpoint of the lane, has no vision of your approach, and your laner has the mana and health to follow up.
Champion Roles and Team Composition Terms
LoL teams run five roles, and each has a shorthand label. These terms also appear in team composition discussions about which role is responsible for what in a fight.
ADC
ADC stands for Attack Damage Carry. It refers to the ranged, auto-attack-focused champion who plays in the bottom lane. ADCs deal sustained physical damage from a distance and are the primary late-game damage source on most teams. They are the most vulnerable in early fights, relying on their support to create safety and opportunities. The tradeoff is raw late-game output: a fed ADC with three items can often win a fight alone if they stay positioned safely.
Support
The support is the second champion in the bottom lane, responsible for protecting the ADC, securing vision, and creating or preventing fights. Supports fall into two broad archetypes: engage supports (Leona, Nautilus, Thresh) who initiate fights with hard crowd control, and enchanter supports (Janna, Lulu, Soraka) who shield, heal, and peel for allies. Supports transition to a roaming and vision-control role once laning phase ends and the team starts contesting objectives.
Jungler
The jungler farms neutral monster camps between the lanes instead of holding a lane position, then uses gold and experience gained from those camps to gank lanes and contest major objectives (Dragon, Baron Nashor, Rift Herald). Junglers split into two archetypes: ganking junglers with strong early CC and gap-closers built for snowballing lanes, and farming junglers with efficient clear paths who scale into late-game carries. The jungler's map influence defines which lanes get ahead in the first 15 minutes.
Tank
Tanks are frontline champions built to absorb damage, initiate fights, and tie up multiple enemies with crowd control. They sacrifice damage output for high base health, armor, and magic resistance, giving carries the time and space to deal damage from behind them. Tank items (Sunfire Aegis, Heartsteel, Jak'Sho) lean into sustained durability over burst. A tank's job is to be the threat enemies focus on, not the one ending fights.
Hyper Carry
A hyper carry is a champion that starts weak but scales exponentially as the game goes late, eventually capable of single-handedly winning teamfights. The power comes from multiplicative stat interactions: attack damage, attack speed, critical strike chance, and on-hit effects all multiply each other, producing damage that grows faster than a standard carry's linear scaling. Jinx, Kog'Maw, Vayne, and Kayle are canonical ADC examples. AP equivalents include Syndra and Karthus. The tradeoff is an early game where they actively need protection to survive.
Peel
Peeling means protecting an ally during combat by stopping enemies from reaching them. Peel methods include body-blocking skillshots (interception), applying crowd control to threats, providing heals and shields to the ally being targeted, or dealing enough damage to force the attacker to redirect. Supports like Janna and Lulu are the best peelers in the game because their kits are built entirely around these tools. Peel is a decision, not just a mechanic: the same crowd control ability can engage or peel depending on how you use it.
In-Game Acronyms, Abbreviations, and Chat Shorthand
LoL players compress a lot of communication into a few keystrokes. These terms appear in pregame lobbies, mid-game chat, and post-game chat. Some are universal gaming abbreviations; others are specific to LoL's history.
SS / MIA
SS and MIA both mean an enemy champion is missing from their lane. SS is shortened from "miss" and was more common on EU servers; MIA stands for "Missing In Action" and was more common on NA. Both fell out of regular use after smart pings were introduced in 2013. The Enemy Missing ping replaced typed calls for most players. "Re" is the companion call, short for "reappear," meaning the missing champion has come back into view.
QWE/R (Spell Slots)
Q, W, E, and R are the keyboard keys bound to your champion's four abilities by default. Q is typically the primary skill used most frequently, W and E are secondary abilities, and R is the ultimate. Players use these letters as shorthand when discussing abilities in chat or VOD reviews: "his Q gaps you," "her R is a global," "save your E for peel." The slot letter is faster to type than the ability name and universally understood across champions.
FF
FF stands for "forfeit," meaning surrender. When someone types "/ff" or calls for a vote in chat, they are requesting to end the game early. A surrender vote requires 4 of 5 players to pass in a standard game (3 of 5 after 20 minutes if the first vote fails at 15). Typing "ff" in all-chat after an outplay is considered poor sportsmanship. "FF15" means a player wants to surrender at the first opportunity (15 minutes).
GG / GLHF
GG means "good game," typically typed in all-chat at the end of a match as a sportsmanship gesture. GLHF is "good luck, have fun," usually typed at the start. Both trace back to early competitive gaming culture across multiple titles. Common variations: GGWP (good game, well played) adds genuine respect; GG EZ (good game, easy) is sarcastic and considered unsportsmanlike. The surrender screen often auto-generates a GG from the losing team in modern LoL.
Backdoor (BD)
Backdooring is attacking enemy base structures (inhibitors, Nexus turrets, the Nexus itself) without an allied minion wave present. The abbreviation is BD. All lane turrets have a passive called Reinforced Armor that cuts incoming damage by 80% (including true damage) when no enemy minions are nearby. Inhibitors and the Nexus have no such protection, which is why backdoors target them directly. The classic backdoor moment in pro play: xPeke's Kassadin at IEM Katowice 2013, surviving 1v2 to destroy SK Gaming's exposed Nexus.
Climbing and Ranked: Terms Every Competitive Player Needs
These terms come up constantly in ranked discussions, coaching content, and the post-game lobby. Understanding them helps you diagnose why you're winning or losing beyond the kill scoreline.
Tilt
Tilt is the mental state of playing worse because of frustration, anger, or emotional carryover from previous games or moments. A tilted player makes worse decisions, communicates poorly, and often tunnels on outcomes (like kills) instead of process. Tilt is self-compounding: a bad game leads to a worse mental state leads to worse decisions leads to another bad game. Recognizing the signs early (forcing fights, flaming teammates, not listening to pings) is the first step to managing it.
MMR
MMR (Matchmaking Rating) is the hidden number that determines who you're matched with in ranked. Your visible rank and LP are a separate display layer that lags behind your actual MMR. LP gains are larger when your MMR is higher than your rank, and smaller when it's lower. Two players sitting at Gold II can have very different MMRs and get matched in very different game qualities. MMR is based purely on win/loss record against opponents of known skill level; KDA and other stats do not factor in.
Inting
Inting is short for "intentional feeding": dying to enemies repeatedly on purpose to give them kills and gold, usually to grief teammates or throw the game. Riot classifies it as a bannable offense with automatic detection through the Instant Feedback System. The term has expanded in community usage to also describe any reckless, dive-first play that results in repeated avoidable deaths, even without clear malicious intent. That grey area (sometimes called "soft inting") is harder to detect and actively being worked on by Riot as of 2025.
Kiting
Kiting means maintaining distance from a pursuing enemy while continuing to deal damage, retreating as they close the gap. The mechanics: issue a basic attack, immediately move as the attack fires (canceling the recovery animation), stop to issue the next attack, repeat. This is called stutter-stepping. ADCs like Ashe and Vayne rely on kiting to deal damage safely from range. Assassins with gap-closers (Zed, Akali, Kha'Zix) are designed specifically to counter kiting by closing the gap faster than it can be reopened.
Snowballing
Snowballing describes an early lead compounding into an ever-larger advantage, the way a snowball rolling downhill gathers more snow and momentum. A snowballing player or team converts kills and objectives into gold and items that make winning the next fight more likely, which generates more resources, and so on. The game has anti-snowball systems (shut down gold, objective bounties, XP catch-up) to slow this loop. "Snowball champion" describes a champion that needs an early lead to stay relevant; contrasted with hypercarries, who scale regardless of early game.
That covers the core vocabulary. Every term above will come up in normal ranked play, coaching content, or teammate communication. The ones with full guides go deeper on mechanics and how to apply them in games.
