Snowboard slang guide

Head to any ski resort, and you’ll hear choruses of “bruh”, “yew!”, “send it!” and “did you see me tomahawk?”. And if you’re wondering what the heck everyone’s talking about, you’ll need a crash course in snowboard slang. 

You see, certain terminology, nuances, and expressions have blossomed from ski and snowboard culture over the years – and even made their way from the mountain to the mainstream. So, how do you learn the lingo? Well, that’s where we come in with our in-depth snowboarding glossary. 

Yep, Duolingo can’t help you here. Instead, you need the aid of riders, ex-seasonnaires, and ski bums who live and breathe the mountain – and know the difference between ‘it’s puking’ and ‘it’s nuking’. So, bookmark this page and get ready for snowboard slang 101. Oh, and once you can talk the talk, don’t forget to walk the walk with our epic selection of men's snowboard jackets and women's snowboard jackets. Now, you’ll have the look and the lingo. 

Guide to snowboard slang

Snowboard slang comes in many forms, so to make things easier, we’ve broken them down into different sub-categories based on where you might hear them. There’s so many terms, and with such a rich and diverse sub-culture evolving all across the world, it’s impossible to keep up. Still, we did our best!

Resort slang

This is more your general ‘on the hill’ terminology. The terms you might hear while waiting in the lift line or just cruising the trails. Let’s take them in alphabetical order!

Après

Short for après- ski — basically anything that happens once you’ve unclipped from your board. That normally includes beer but branches out to dancing on tables, head-banging to live music, and even chilling in hot springs depending on where you are!

Brain bucket

Slang for helmet. Safety first, guys. 

Beaver slap

When you slam your snowboard on the ground (with one foot strapped in) to remove loose snow from the topsheet. It’s effective and makes one hell of a sound. Plus, you’re just as likely to hear this outside bars as on the mountain.

Bro/bruh/brah/bra

Your crew, buddies, pals, and ride-or-dies. Also used to begin most sentences and the best thing to say if you can’t remember someone’s name …

Dope

How could we not include this!? It’s interchangeable with ‘awesome’ or ‘great’ – and other slang such as ‘sick’ and ‘rad’. Plus, it’s the name of one of the greatest ski and snowboard outerwear brands ever … *cough* 

Gnarly

Something hardcore, challenging, or on the crazy and dangerous side. However, most things that are gnarly are also freaking awesome and command respect. For example, you can take on a ‘gnarly line’ or have a ‘gnarly scar’ from that ACL surgery. 

Grom

Short for grommet. This is a young snowboarder, often with skills better than your own (annoyingly).

Hill

You’ll hear this thrown around a lot, especially when someone declares they’re ‘going up the hill’. It’s just another word for ‘mountain’.

Pit zips

The zips on your jacket underneath your arms. Someone might unzip these for some air under there or zip them up when those temperatures drop.

Puking 

When someone enthusiastically says, “It’s puking”, it means it’s snowing. Normally a fair amount. And their excitement is because fresh snow means powder, baby! Don’t confuse this expression with ‘it’s nuking’, though. That’s reserved for serious snowfall only – the kind that means you have to spend hours digging out your car, but you’ll have freshies for days (we’ll explain what those are in a sec).

Quiver

Your snowboard collection, which includes different boards for different conditions.

Rad

Short for ‘radical’ and means ‘awesome’, ‘great’, or ‘amazing’. You can also interchange it with ‘sick’ or ‘sweet’.

Riding/rider

This means snowboarding/snowboarder … but just sounds more epic, right?

Shredding

Snowboarding with skill and riding at your best – maybe with a little speed, too. You can also use the word ‘ripping’.

Shredding the Gnar

To ride tricky terrain (as in ‘gnarly’) while riding your heart out (as in ‘shredding’). This phrase originates from ‘GNAR’, an acronym for ‘Gaffney’s Numerical Assessment of Radness’, a game and point system invented by Robb Gaffney and the late ‘n’ legendary Shane McConkey. Created in Squaw Valley Resort, riders scored GNAR points by doing awesome stuff on the mountain – such as landing a double front flip or, for max points, riding naked. Oh, but you’d lose 3,000 points if you had a ‘yard sale’ (more on that later).

Ski bum

Someone who lives in resort and snowboards every day (but their life is a mystery pre-mountains), knows everyone (because they’ve been there for years), and does as little work as possible (but still has money to pay for their lift ticket, accommodation, and shot-skis somehow). Oh, and you can usually find them in a bar come evening, chatting the ear off the owner.

Steeze/steezy

What happens when you blend style with ease? Steeze! This ‌refers to anyone possessing style on or off the mountain without trying too hard. It could refer to how they ride, look, or both!

Stoked

Slang for super excited or psyched. It can be a descriptive state of mind or used as a noun. For example: ‘Pow raises your stoke levels’.

Tray

Another word for your snowboard. You can also refer to it as your shred sled, noodle, whip, and/or stick.

Yeeeew!

Used to convey extreme joy, glee, and high levels of stoke. Riders often squeal it in delight when coming down a particularly epic off-piste line, pow included.

Park slang

The Park is where so much of these terms originate. Park rats are the biggest representation of the culture that snowboard bred. Bringing the freestyle flair and freedom of skateboarding to snow has fuelled some of the greatest progressions in the sport. So it’s only natural they have their own language …

3,5,7,9

Shorthand for degrees of spin rotations, such as 360, 540, 720, 900, etc.

Boned out

When you straighten one leg during a grab for a little more control ‘n’ style.

Bonk

Deliberately tapping an object or feature (like a tree stump) with your snowboard.

Butter

Leaning all your weight on the nose or tail of your board on flat snow and flexing so the other end is off the ground – usually while spinning. This differs from ‘buttery’, which describes something done smoothly.

Cork/corked

An off-axis rotation that kind of resembles a corkscrew. You basically rotate while upside down and angled – no easy feat, my friend. In fact, it’s pretty impossible to nail First T (first time).

Fakie

Riding backward or with your non-dominant foot forward. It’s kind of interchangeable with ‘switch’. However, some argue ‘switch’ is the act of riding with your weaker/opposite foot forward while ‘fakie’ is performing and landing tricks while riding switch. Yep, this subject has sparked many heated debates …

Hit/hitting

This entails anything you can ride, catch air off, and/or land a trick on, such as a feature, kicker, rail, line, or slope. For example: “Let’s go hit that rail.”

Huck/hucking

Throwing yourself into a trick or off a large kicker  – usually with oomph and aggression, and not much thought around your own safety. This might ring a bell if you’re a fan of X Games’ Knuckle Huck comp, where riders throw their best trick off the knuckle (the curved bit before a steeper slope) of a pretty hardcore jump.

Jam 

A type of comp (often known as a ‘jam session’ or ‘rail jam’), which includes all riders performing simultaneously, dropping in one after the other.

Jib/jibbing

The act of riding and playing on anything that isn’t a slope. So, that could be sliding, popping, jumping, and doing small, fun tricks on rails, boxes, natural lips, and even fallen trees. 

Kicker

Another word for jump. This can be natural or man-made. You might hear riders refer to jumps as ‘booters’, too.

Kink

A bend or curve in a rail or an unsmooth transitional surface on a halfpipe or jump.

Park rat

What to call someone who spends 99% of their time in the park – and the other 1% of their time talking (and thinking) about it.

Pipe

Short for halfpipe.

Scorpion/scorp

Ever seen someone fall on their stomach, catching their head with their feet and board – kind of like a scorpion’s sting? This infamous slam is known as a ‘scorpion’ or ‘scorp’ – and man, does it hurt.

Send it/sending/getting sendy/going full send

If someone tells you to “send it”, they’re telling you to attempt that big, tricky feature with lots of gusto ‘n’ confidence – basically, commit to it 100%. You can never really half-send something; it’s full send or nada.

Speed check

A quick turn to rapidly reduce speed when approaching a kicker. This is usually done with a sharp heel or toe edge slide for some light action on the brakes without coming to a complete stop.

Stomp

The act of flawlessly landing a jump or trick – e.g., “I just totally stomped that landing”. 

Taco

A fall that sees your body draped in half over a rail or box in the shape of a taco shell. It’s painful, unlucky – and enough to put you off Taco Tuesdays for a while.

Tweak/tweaked

Grabbing and cranking your board forward or backward mid-air/mid-trick for boat-loads of style.

Piste slang

You’ll likely even hear a little bit of slang thrown around when you’re just cruising the groomers, ripping that corduroy, hunting side-hits, and, of course, lapping Jerrys and blastin’ them just for the hell of it …Here’s our picks.

Bluebird

Dreamy conditions with blue skies, sunshine, and ideal visibility (known as ‘vis’). Some argue a true bluebird is when there’s fresh powder, too.

Bomb/bombing

Charging down a piste at high speed. Beware – not all bombers are in control.

Bulletproof

Hard-as-hell snow that’s frozen and compact – bullets would bounce off it, basically. It’s fun for riding fast but super painful to fall on (and you’ll probably end up sliding for a while!).

Bunny hill

A small hill with a gentle incline where beginners learn to snowboard. There’s often a tow rope ,too. 

Cruising

Snowboarding at an effortless, mellow level, and typically down ‘cruisers’ (green or blue runs).

Death cookies

Small, annoying ice chunks that appear in the middle of the slopes – seemingly from nowhere (although most probably from poor grooming or avalanche debris) and impossible to avoid. The result? They get under your board, you lose control, and your face makes friends with the slope. Nice.

Dust on crust

A thin layer of fresh snow covering hardpack snow underneath.

Gondy

Short for gondola or cable car.

Groomers

Resort trails maintained by groomer machines. Head to these first thing for corduroy – freshly groomed snow that looks like corduroy fabric, thanks to the ridges made by the machines.

Ice Coast

Slang for the East Coast of the US. Here, ski resorts have wetter, heavier snow that melts during the day – thanks to a combo of warmer temperatures and lower elevations – but freezes to ice overnight.

Icephalt

A super icy run where you’re better off swapping your board for ice skates.

Knuckle-dragger

A snowboarder so ace at carving (turning while on the edge of your board) that they can touch the snow with their hand.

Lap

A chair/gondy ride up combined with a top-to-bottom (or T2B) run down. You can lap a single chair and run, the whole mountain, or just the park. Doing laps or lapping the hill is the common usage!

Lifties

The heroes and heroines who man the lifts and keep the mountain running. They also have the power to slow down chairs (chairlifts) if you’re a newbie – so it pays to make friends with them!

Pressing glass

First in line for the gondola (or ‘gondy’). It means you’re pressing your face against the glass, waiting for the lift to start so you can score those freshies.

Sierra Cement 

The hard crud snow found throughout the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

Slushies

Slushy snow created by warmer temperatures in Spring. This is an absolute thigh killer.

Tomahawk

When you fall and rag-doll down the mountain, spinning end-over-end like the rotation of a thrown ax. It’s brutal to watch – and even more brutal to experience!

Whiteout

When conditions and visibility are so bad, you can barely see anything in front of you. It’s often caused by heavy snowfall, though, so fresh powder is a silver lining.

Yard sale

When you slam/wipe out/fall pretty hard with zero grace and your legs or arms akimbo. Your kit will also fly off in different directions, so it looks like you’re having a yard sale. And you thought tomahawking sounded bad …

Freeride slang

Lastly, we venture beyond the bounds of the resort to discuss the slang developed by those who spent the day on the search for big pow lines and the complimentary ‘Yews!’ that come with them.

Avy bag

Slang for avalanche airbag: a backpack containing a large balloon that you activate if caught in an avalanche. The balloon shoots out and rapidly inflates, keeping you close to the surface as the slide takes you. 

Backcountry

If you’re on unmarked, unpisted, and unpatrolled terrain outside a resort’s boundaries, you’re in the backcountry. However, this is for advanced and expert riders only and should only be done with a reliable crew or guide. Don’t forget to take the right equipment with you, too.

Dawn patrol

When you’re in the backcountry before the sun rises, making for an epic (and Insta-worthy) experience. Plus, you can be at your desk for a 9 am start, berating your job and wishing you were still out there.

Depth hoar

Unstable, large snow crystals found in the snowpack below the surface. These are often to blame for triggering avalanches.

Dropping

Or ‘dropping in’. This is the act of beginning a run with a steep incline, such as launching off a cliff (‘cliff drop’) or cornice (‘cornie’).

Ducking the rope

Deliberately going under a resort rope marking closed terrain (or even private property). Riders often do this to hit ungroomed off-piste powder. However, you can have your lift ticket/season pass taken away if caught, and some states and resorts see this as punishable by law.

Face shot

When deep snow rises like a tidal wave, and you’re left breathing in powder, wishing you’d packed a snorkel. It also refers to the hilarious act (that’s sarcasm, BTW) of your friend sharply stopping to spray snow in your face. Nice.

Freshies

Fresh, untracked lines in powder. You can normally only achieve freshies by grabbing first lifts or hiking up early and getting there before anyone else. This is also known as ‘first tracks’ or ‘laying tracks’.

Frankenskins

When your climbing skins have turned heavy and lost any glide, thanks to the amount of frozen snow stuck to them. Okay, this is mostly one for your ski touring buds, but it’s good to watch out for Frankenskins with your splitboard skins, too.

Line

Your chosen route down the mountain. Freeriders commonly use this term when opting for a safe line down, avoiding natural features like major cliff drops and crevasses. Another type of line is the ‘fall line’ – it sounds awful, but it just means pointing your board’s nose straight down the mountain.

No-fall zone

Hopefully something you won’t experience if you’ve planned your line well. This is an area where you really don’t want to fall – otherwise, you’ll be looking at a heli trip out of there…and an expensive hospital bill. Yikes!

Pillow

A mound of powder creating a soft, pillowy bump you can jump and land on. Pillows form over rocks, boulders, and trees, so you can ride whole pillow lines from top to bottom if you’re lucky.

Pitted

Becoming absolutely enveloped in powder when turning. Face shots are a common consequence.

Pow 

Short for powder – A.K.A. the dreamy fresh, untouched snow all riders crave. You might also hear it referred to as ‘pow pow’ when it’s good but ‘chowder’ when it’s bad (chopped/snowboarded snow and powder). And then there’s ‘Japow’ – Japan’s bucket-list-worthy light, dry, fluffy powder –  and Champagne Powder®, Steamboat’s trademarked airy, floaty, dry powder.

Powderhound

A rider who lives and breathes pow. You can rely on them to find (or ‘sniff out’) the freshest pow and lines.

Rooster tail

The high spray of powder created from the back of your board when turning, like a rooster’s tail. A sight to behold – and envy.

Slide

Slang for avalanche. ‘Slab’ is also a type of avalanche. However, neither is what you want to be caught in the middle of.

Tracked out

When it’s impossible to create any more fresh tracks because the terrain is already covered in other riders’ lines. Yep, we’ve seen this phrase reduce powderhounds to tears. You can still ride, of course, but you won’t be laying any freshies. And if it’s really tracked out, moguls appear (also known as ‘bumps’) – some riders love ‘em, others despise them.

Vert

Short for vertical: the elevation change between the top and bottom of a run.

White room

When you become completely enveloped by deep powder, and you can only see white. Sounds disorientating, but it’s actually super dreamy.

FAQs

Is snowboard slang different from ski slang?

It depends. Some slang is ski-specific because you’re talking about things you can’t do on a snowboard. This includes ‘noodling’ (when you make turns with your skis close together and have a hip wiggle going on) and ‘pizza’ and ‘French fries’ (having your skis either in a snowplow or parallel position). In the same way, some slang refers specifically to snowboarding, such as ‘tray’, ‘rooster tail’, and ‘beaver slap’. 

Way back in the day, though, ‌snowboarding’s arrival saw snowboarders create new slang to distance and differentiate themselves from skiing. After all, this was skiing’s rebellious, expressive, and unapologetic half-sibling with cultural roots in surfing and skateboarding – and the language needed to reflect that. Over time, though, skiing and snowboarding lingo merged. And today, most slang terms are the same or totally interchangeable. Handy.

What are some examples of outdated slang? 

To give it its due, most snowboarding slang has stood the test of time. However, just like anything, some phrases have their moment and then move on. One example is ‘rolling up the windows’, where you rapidly spin your arms mid-air after hitting a jump, mimicking rolling up a car window. Today, you’d probably call it ‘windmilling’ because, you know, most cars have automatic windows now. ‘Tomahawk’ also used to be called ‘egg beater’. We guess ‘tomahawk’ just sounds more awesome …

Plus, for the 2020/21 season, FIS Snowboard (the International Ski Federation) announced the name-change of the foundational skate and snowboard ‘mute’ grab to the ‘Weddle’ grab, in honor of Chris Weddle, a deaf skateboarder, and the trick’s inventor. Skateboarding legend Tony Hawk led the motion after announcing a different name would better honor and recognize Weddle – something the FIS officials and snowboarding community heavily support.  

How has snowboard slang evolved?

Snowboard slang has been around as long as the sport itself. However, terms such as ‘grom’, ‘gnarly’, and ‘pitted’ originate from surfing and surf culture (well, snowboarding was nearly called ‘snurfing’, did ya know?). We might have taken a bit of lingo from the skateboarding world, too … 

Over time, snowboarding has evolved – and so has its slang. For example, jibbing’s tentative first steps were in the 80s before blowing up in the 90s, thanks to riders like Jeremy Jones and JP Walker showing us how to hit those non-snow features. And riders didn’t just have to master these new tricks and styles – they had to conquer all the new vocab, too. This was especially true as they created more and more tricks (anyone else remember Shaun White’s Double McTwist 1260 invention?). And as future styles, tricks and technologies emerge, so will new snowboard slang, rolling ‘n’ evolving right alongside. 

Wrapping up 

Feeling ready to join in with convos on the chair and in the bars now? Memorize our list, and you will be! And if you ever have a mind-blank, just remember that ‘bro’ and ‘dope’ are pretty fail-safe options. So is saying you’re ‘stoked’ in reply to anyone’s question …

However, are you shouting at the screen, saying we’ve missed something super vital? If there’s a term you’re dying for us to include, let us know via crew@dopesnow.com. Or how about letting us in on your favorite phrases via the Dope Snow Community Facebook Group? We’re stoked to hear what you think. 

Related reading:

• What are the different types of snowboard
• Men's snowboarding pants / Women's snowboarding pants
• How to snowboard: 18 tips for beginners
• Men's snowboard wear / Women's snowboard wear
• What size snowboard should I get?