League of Legends Terms Glossary: Every Callout and Abbreviation Explained

Q: What does diff mean in League of Legends?

Difference. Jungle diff means someone is blaming the jungler for the gap between the teams. It's a complaint rather than a callout, and it's typed most often by the player currently losing their own matchup.

League of Legends Reference

Every Term, Translated

Callouts, Slang & Abbreviations

Someone typed "care mid, no prio, they're setting up for grubs" and you nodded along like you understood it. We've all been there. League has built up more than fifteen years of shorthand, and almost none of it gets explained inside the actual game. New players land in a lobby where four strangers are speaking a private language, and plenty of veterans quietly guess at half the macro terms streamers throw around.

So here's the translation. The first half sorts terms by where you'll actually run into them: chat callouts, map and jungle names, macro concepts, fight language, draft talk and build talk. The second half is a plain A to Z index of every abbreviation you'll see typed in chat. This page gets updated as the game changes, so bookmark it rather than hunting for it again.

Chat Callouts Map & Jungle Macro Concepts Fighting Terms Draft Talk Build Talk Insults & Attitude A to Z Abbreviations FAQ

Chat Callouts

These get typed mid-fight, so they're compressed down to as few characters as possible. If you only read one section, read this one, because misreading a callout costs you a death.

Care

Be careful. Usually means an enemy has gone missing and could be heading your way. "Care top" means watch out, top lane.

Watch out: "cc" means crowd control far more often than it means careful.

SS / MIA

Missing callouts left over from the game's earliest days. Both mean the same thing: the enemy laner has left lane and nobody knows where they went.

Prio

Short for priority. You have prio when you can leave your lane first without losing anything, usually because you've shoved the wave in. It's the most useful macro word in the game.

Reset

Going back to base to buy and heal. "Let me reset" means give me twenty seconds before we do anything. A good reset is one that costs you nothing.

OMW

On my way. Almost always from a jungler or a roaming mid laner, and almost always arriving four seconds later than you hoped.

Back

Stop chasing, walk away, the fight isn't there. If a teammate types this while you're diving under a tower, they're right and you should listen.

Wait / hold

Don't start the objective or the fight yet. Something's missing, usually a summoner spell, an ultimate, or a fourth teammate.

GG go next

Someone has mentally left the game. It technically means "this one's over, queue the next," and it's also the fastest way to turn a winnable game into a loss.

Map and Jungle Names

Every camp and most bushes on Summoner's Rift have a nickname, and the official names aren't always the ones people use.

Blue and Red

The two big buffs. Blue gives mana regeneration and ability haste, red adds a burn and a slow to your attacks. "Can I get blue?" is a mid laner asking your jungler for a favour.

Gromp, Raptors, Krugs, Wolves

The four smaller jungle camps. Raptors are the bird pack, krugs are the rock creatures, gromp is the frog, wolves are the wolves. Junglers plan entire routes around which of these are up.

Scuttle

The crab in the river. Killing it gives vision and a speed zone over that half of the river, which is why two junglers will happily throw a 2v2 over a crab at three minutes.

Grubs

The Voidgrub camp that spawns in the top side river pit at eight minutes. Killing grubs stacks a buff that adds true damage against towers, and at three stacks your team gets Voidmites that help chew through them.

Tri-brush

The three-way bush cluster between a side lane and the jungle. It's the most common place on the map to get caught out, which is why "ward tri" gets typed so often.

Pit

The sunken area where a major objective spawns. Baron pit and drake pit are the two that matter, and both are places you shouldn't walk into without vision.

Fog of war

Any part of the map you can't currently see. Most disasters in League happen because somebody walked confidently into fog they had no information about.

Pink

The control ward you buy for gold. It doesn't expire on a timer, it reveals stealthed wards and champions, and it's the cheapest way to stop getting picked off. Everyone still calls it a pink.

Deep ward

A ward placed inside enemy territory rather than around your own lane. Deep wards are how teams see an objective setup coming a full thirty seconds early.

Face check

Walking into an unwarded bush to find out whether someone's in it. The information is real. So is the death.

Macro Concepts

This is the section that separates a player who mechanically outplays people and still loses from one who climbs. Macro is the game happening on the map rather than in your lane, and it has its own vocabulary.

Tempo

Who gets to do something next. Recall at a good time when your opponent can't, and you're up on tempo: you get a camp, a plate or a roam before they're even back on the map.

Freeze

Holding the minion wave near your own tower on purpose by only last-hitting, never pushing. It starves the enemy laner of gold and makes ganking them trivial.

Slow push

Letting your wave build up over time by killing only the minions that would otherwise kill yours. A slow push snowballs into a huge wave that crashes into the tower for free.

Crash

Shoving a big wave all the way into the enemy tower. Crashing and then recalling is the cleanest reset in the game, because the tower eats the minions while you shop.

Bounce

What the wave does after it crashes: the tower kills your minions, the enemy's survive, and the wave rolls back toward you. Understanding the bounce is most of wave management.

Roam

Leaving your lane to make something happen somewhere else. A good roam trades a few minions for a kill, a ward or a dragon. A bad roam trades your whole lane for nothing.

Collapse

Multiple teammates converging on one enemy at once. If someone types "collapse bot," everyone in range should already be walking that way.

Split push

One player pressuring a side lane alone while the other four hold the map elsewhere. It forces the enemy to choose between losing a tower and losing a numbers fight.

1-3-1 and 1-4

Mid game map formations. 1-3-1 puts a threat in both side lanes with three in the middle, while 1-4 groups four and leaves one champion to split. Both stretch the enemy team.

Invade

Walking into the enemy jungle to take their camps or kill them in it. Counter-jungling doesn't just gain you gold, it takes gold away from someone else, which counts twice.

Vertical jungling

A jungler and a support taking the entire top half or bottom half of both jungles, rather than each sticking to their own side. Standard in pro play, increasingly common in high elo solo queue.

Setup

Everything you do before an objective spawns: clearing wards, placing your own, pushing lanes in, positioning near the pit. Objectives are won during setup, not during the fight.

The one that trips up everyone: prio and tempo sound like the same thing. They're related, but they aren't interchangeable. Prio is about a lane right now. Tempo is about the whole map over the next thirty seconds. You can have prio and still be losing tempo, if you spend that prio farming instead of doing something with it.

Fighting Terms

The language of what happens once champions actually start hitting each other.

Engage / disengage

Starting a fight and getting out of one. Champions get labelled by which they provide, and a team with five engage tools and no disengage tends to lose every fight it didn't choose.

Peel

Protecting your own carry by putting crowd control and shields on whoever is trying to kill them. Peeling is the least flashy job in League and wins the most teamfights.

Kite / orb walk

Moving between attacks so you deal damage while staying out of range. Orb walking is the same idea done precisely: attack, cancel the leftover animation with a move command, repeat.

Trade

A short exchange of damage in lane where nobody dies. Winning trades builds a lead without a single kill, and it's why cooldowns matter more than raw stats early.

Poke

Chipping away from long range with no intention of committing. Poke comps try to win the fight before it starts by making the enemy too low to contest an objective.

All-in

Committing everything, summoner spells included, to kill someone right now. If it fails you have nothing left, which is why timing matters more than damage.

Dive

Going under an enemy tower to kill someone. It works when you have enough health, enough crowd control and someone willing to soak the tower shots. It fails spectacularly when any of those are missing.

Proc

Triggering an effect. An item procs when its passive fires. The term is borrowed from older online games and nobody in League has ever agreed on what the letters originally stood for.

Chain CC

Stacking crowd control effects back to back so the target never gets to act. It's the main reason a teamfight can end with someone dying without moving.

Burst

Damage delivered fast enough that the target can't respond. The gap between burst and sustained damage is the whole reason assassins and marksmen build completely differently.

Animation cancel

Interrupting the leftover part of an attack or ability with another action so you act sooner. It's the mechanical skill that most separates a champion's average player from its best one.

Zoning

Standing somewhere that makes an enemy unwilling to walk forward, without ever hitting them. You can zone someone off an entire wave just by existing near it with your abilities up.

Draft Talk

Champion select has its own dialect, and plenty of games get decided here before anyone loads in.

Blind pick

Locking in before you've seen what you're up against. It's also the old name for the casual queue where nobody banned anything, which Swiftplay has since replaced.

Counter pick

Choosing specifically to beat something already locked in on the other side. Worth knowing: picking a counter you've never played is usually worse than picking your main.

Flex pick

A champion who can go in more than one role, so the enemy can't tell what your composition is yet. Flex picks are why pro drafts look so slow.

Hover

Putting a champion on your portrait before locking. Hovering tells your team your intent, and occasionally baits the enemy into a wasted ban.

Autofill

The system putting you in a role you didn't queue for because a lobby needed filling. It's the most common excuse typed in champion select, sometimes fairly.

OTP

One trick pony. Someone who plays essentially one champion and knows every matchup on it. A good OTP is scarier than a good generalist, and a liability the moment their pick gets banned.

Dodge

Leaving champion select on purpose to avoid a game you think is lost. It costs LP and a queue timer, and there's a real argument that it's occasionally worth it.

Off-role

Any position that isn't your main one. Everyone is worse off-role than they think, which is exactly why autofill generates so much frustration.

Build Talk

Item and class shorthand. Specific item names churn from season to season, but the class names have been stable for years.

AD and AP

Attack damage and ability power, the two damage types. Which one a champion scales with decides their whole item path and which resistance the enemy buys against them.

Ability Haste

The stat that lowers your cooldowns. Every point gives you the same amount of extra casting, which is exactly why it replaced the old cooldown reduction percentage.

On-hit

A build made of effects that trigger on each basic attack rather than on abilities. On-hit builds turn attack speed into damage, which is why they show up on champions with attack steroids.

Bruiser / juggernaut

Melee fighters who build both damage and durability. Bruisers get there with mobility and sustained damage, juggernauts get there by being unkillable and slow. Both live in the top lane.

Enchanter

A support built around shields, heals and buffs rather than crowd control. Enchanters are the reason peel is a job description.

Power spike

The moment a champion suddenly gets much stronger, usually a specific item or a specific level. Knowing your own spikes tells you when to fight, and knowing theirs tells you when not to.

Core item

The item a champion essentially always builds first or second. If someone asks what your core is, they want your first two purchases, not all six slots.

Component

A cheap partial item that builds into a bigger one. Buying the right component on a small back beats saving for the finished item, because the stats work immediately.

Scaling

How much stronger a champion gets as the game goes long. A scaling champion is weak early on purpose and expects to win at four items, which is why they farm through pressure instead of fighting it.

Sustain

Anything that keeps you healthy in lane without going back: lifesteal, omnivamp, health regeneration, a heal on an ability. Winning a lane against high sustain usually means winning it before it comes online.

Insults and Attitude

You'll see all of these. Most of them mean less than the person typing them thinks, and knowing what they mean makes them easier to ignore.

Diff / gap

Shorthand for "the difference in this lane is why we're losing." "Top diff" blames the top laner. It's almost always typed by whoever is currently losing their own lane.

Inting

Originally short for intentionally feeding. It now covers any death someone else thinks was avoidable, which is a lot of ground.

Griefing

Deliberately playing badly to make teammates lose without technically going AFK. Unlike most of this list, it's an actual reportable offence.

Tilt

Playing worse because you're frustrated. Everyone tilts. The players who climb are the ones who notice it happening and queue something else instead.

Throwing

Losing a game you'd already won, usually by taking one fight nobody needed. A throw is a decision, not a mechanical mistake.

Hardstuck

Sitting at the same rank for a long time. It gets used as an insult, but it describes the normal state of most of the player base, which is why it lands so poorly.

Elo hell

The belief that your rank is holding you down rather than reflecting you. It's the oldest argument in League and the numbers have never supported it, but it'll outlive us all.

Boosted

An accusation that someone reached their rank through other people. Occasionally true, usually just what people type after losing a duel.

A to Z: Every Abbreviation You'll See in Chat

Everything above sorted by concept. This part is sorted by letter, for when someone types four characters at you and you need the answer right now.

A

AA: Auto attack, your basic right-click attack.
Ace: All five enemy champions dead at once.
AD / AP: Attack damage and ability power.
ADC: Attack damage carry, the marksman in the bot lane duo.
AFK: Away from keyboard.
Aggro: Who a tower, minion or monster is currently targeting.
AH: Ability haste, the stat that lowers cooldowns.
AOE: Area of effect, damage that covers a zone rather than one target.
APC: An ability power carry, usually a mage playing a carry role.
ARAM: All Random All Mid, the one-lane mode on the Howling Abyss.
Autofill: Being placed in a role you didn't queue for.

B

B: Back, either recall or back off, depending on the panic level.
Backdoor: Attacking enemy structures with no minions of your own present.
Baron: Baron Nashor, the top side epic monster that spawns at twenty minutes.
BM: Bad mannered.
Boosted: Accused of reaching a rank through someone else's play.
Bot: Bottom lane, or a computer-controlled opponent, or an account being scripted. Context is everything.
Buff: To make something stronger, or a neutral monster's bonus like blue or red.
Burst: Damage delivered fast enough that the target can't react.
BXP: Battle Pass experience, the progression currency honor now feeds into.

C

Carry: To be the main reason your team wins, or the champion expected to do it.
CC: Crowd control, anything that stops an enemy acting freely.
Cheese: An unusual strategy that rarely works and wins outright when it does.
Clutch: Making the right play under maximum pressure.
Collapse: Several teammates converging on one target at once.
Counter jungle: Taking camps in the enemy jungler's half of the map.
CS: Creep score, the number of minions and monsters you've last hit.

D

DC: Disconnected.
Diff: Difference, as in "jungle diff." A complaint, not a callout.
Dive: Attacking someone under their own tower.
Dodge: Leaving champion select deliberately.
DoT: Damage over time.
DPS: Damage per second, meaning sustained rather than burst damage.
Drake: An elemental dragon in the bottom side pit.
Duo: Two players queued together.

E

Elder: Elder Dragon, which replaces elemental drakes once a team has taken four.
Elo: The rating system League used before named tiers. The word stuck anyway.
Elo hell: The belief that your rank is holding you back rather than describing you.
Engage: Starting a fight, or the tool used to start it.

F

Face check: Walking into an unwarded bush to find out what's in it.
Farm: Last hitting minions for gold.
FB: First blood, the first kill of the game.
Fed: Someone who has collected a lot of gold from kills.
FF: Forfeit, the surrender vote.
Flex: A champion who can play more than one role, or the ranked queue you can enter as a group.
FOTM: Flavour of the month, whatever's popular right now.
Freeze: Holding the wave near your own tower on purpose.

G

Gank: Attacking a lane you don't play in, usually from the jungle.
Gap closer: An ability that covers distance quickly.
GG: Good game.
Grubs: The Voidgrub camp at eight minutes, which grants bonus true damage to towers.

H

Hard CC: Crowd control that fully interrupts, like a stun or a knock-up.
Hardstuck: Stuck at the same rank for a long time.
Harass: Chipping an opponent's health without trying to kill them.
Herald: Rift Herald, who occupies the Baron pit from fifteen minutes until Baron arrives.
Honor: The five-level behaviour score your teammates vote on after games.
Hypercarry: A champion who is weak early and dominant once fully built.

I to K

Inhib: Inhibitor, the structure behind the third tower in each lane.
Instalock: Picking immediately without discussing it.
Int: Intentionally feeding, or any death someone else considers avoidable.
Invade: Entering the enemy jungle.
JG: Jungle.
Juke: Dodging a skillshot by making the caster misread you.
KDA: Kills, deaths and assists.
Kite: Dealing damage while moving away.
KS: Kill steal, taking the last hit on a kill somebody else set up.

L to M

Last hit: The final blow that kills a minion and gives you the gold.
Leash: Helping the jungler damage their first camp before leaving for lane.
LP: League points, the ranked currency you gain and lose per game.
Main: Your most played champion or role.
Mayhem: ARAM: Mayhem, the augment-driven version of ARAM.
MIA: Missing in action.
MMR: Matchmaking rating, the hidden number the game actually matches you on.
MR: Magic resist.
MS: Movement speed.

N to P

Nerf: To make something weaker.
Normals: Any game that doesn't affect your rank.
OP: Overpowered.
OTP: One trick pony, a player devoted to a single champion.
Overextend: Pushing far enough forward that you can be caught.
PBE: Public Beta Environment, where Riot tests changes before they go live.
Peel: Protecting your own carry from whoever's diving them.
Penta: Killing all five enemies yourself in quick succession.
Pink: A control ward.
Poke: Long range chip damage.
Premade: Players who queued together.
Prio: Priority, the ability to leave your lane first without losing anything.
Proc: To trigger an effect.
Proxy: Farming enemy minions between their towers.

R to S

Reset: A trip back to base to buy and heal.
Roam: Leaving your lane to make something happen elsewhere.
Role Quest: The per-position objective introduced in the 2026 season, each giving its lane a different reward.
Scuttle: The river crab.
Skillshot: An ability that can miss.
Smurf: An experienced player on an account well below their real skill.
Snowball: Turning one advantage into a bigger one, repeatedly.
Soul: Dragon Soul, the permanent team buff for taking four elemental drakes.
Split push: Pressuring a side lane alone while your team holds elsewhere.
SS: Missing, the older sibling of MIA.
Sustain: Healing or lifesteal that keeps you in lane.
Swiftplay: The permanent casual Summoner's Rift queue that replaced Quickplay.

T to Z

Tank: A champion built to absorb damage and start fights.
Team comp: Team composition, the mix of roles and damage types your five picks make.
Tempo: Who gets to act next on the map.
TFT: Teamfight Tactics, the separate auto-battler mode.
Throw: Losing a game you'd already won.
Tilt: Playing worse because you're frustrated.
Toxic: Behaving in a way that makes the game worse for your own team.
TP: Teleport.
Ult: Ultimate, the ability on R.
Ward: Any item that grants vision of an area.
Wombo combo: Several ultimates chained together into one devastating sequence.
WP: Well played.
Zoning: Making an enemy unwilling to walk somewhere without ever hitting them.

Looking for the memes instead of the terminology? The classics, from Rito Pls to Challenjour to Vayne-spotting, live in our original League of Legends meme dictionary, which we've kept as a snapshot of what the community sounded like a decade ago.

What Players Actually Argue About

Terminology threads get surprisingly heated, and the arguments fall into the same few camps every time.

The plain English camp

A steady group insists compressed callouts cause more confusion than they save, especially in lower ranks where half the lobby reads "prio" as a typo. Their fix is simple: type "I can leave lane" instead.

The precision camp

The counterargument is that these words exist because the plain English version takes too long to type mid-fight, and that a team where everyone knows the shorthand coordinates far faster than one where nobody does.

The pro play borrowers

Most macro vocabulary reaches solo queue through broadcast analysts. Players pick up terms like tempo and vertical jungling from watching, then apply them to games where the underlying coordination doesn't exist, which is where a lot of misuse starts.

The mute everything camp

The most common climbing advice in any discussion of chat is to turn it off entirely. If you never read a callout you never get baited by a wrong one, and the ping wheel carries the information that actually matters.

Perspectives paraphrased from various Reddit discussions of League terminology and in-game communication.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "prio" mean in League of Legends?

Priority. You have prio in a lane when you can leave it first without giving anything up, usually because you've pushed the wave into the enemy tower. Having prio near an objective is what lets your team set up on it before the other team can.

What does "care" mean when a teammate types it?

Be careful. It's a warning that an enemy is unaccounted for and might be heading toward you. "Care mid" means the enemy mid laner is missing and mid lane should back off. Note that "cc" usually means crowd control instead, so read the context.

What's the difference between tempo and priority?

Priority describes one lane right now: whether you can leave it for free. Tempo describes the whole map over the next stretch of time: who gets to act next. You gain tempo by turning priority into something, like a roam, a camp, or an objective setup.

What does "diff" mean?

Difference. "Jungle diff" means someone is blaming the jungler for the gap between the teams. It's a complaint rather than a callout, and it's typed most often by the player currently losing their own matchup.

What is a freeze, and why would I want one?

A freeze is holding the minion wave near your own tower by last-hitting only, never pushing. It keeps the enemy laner far from their tower, cuts their gold and experience, and makes them very easy to gank. It's the strongest thing you can do in a lane you're already winning.

What are grubs in League of Legends?

Voidgrubs, the camp that spawns in the top side river pit at eight minutes. Killing them gives your whole team bonus true damage against structures, and at three stacks you also get Voidmites that attack towers alongside you. They only spawn once per game.

Do I need to know all of this to climb?

No. The macro words are the ones that change how you play, because they name things you can actually do. The chat callouts are worth knowing so you don't misread a warning. Everything in the insults section is safe to ignore forever.

Is there a term we've missed, or one you used wrong for years before somebody corrected you? Drop it in the comments and we'll add it.