Glossary
This list will attempt to explain some of the more common jargon found within WoT that is not always readily apparent to the newer player.
General Terms (by letter)
Numerical
- 1 shot/1 shotted - To kill or be killed with one shot. This can refer to being killed by one shot from full health or limited health (ie - "That tank can be 1 shotted from his current health").
- Number (in reference to a gun) - It is common for players to refer to a gun by its caliber and length. For instance, players commonly refer to the 8.8 cm PaK 36 L/56 as the short 88 and the 8.8 cm KwK L/71 as the long 88.
A
- Alpha - The amount of damage that a gun does in a single shot.
- Ammo Rack - The area of a vehicle where ammunition is stored. It can be located in the hull or the turret of a tank (ready rack).
- Ammo Racking - Either damaging a vehicle's ammo rack or destroying it completely by way of detonating its ammo rack (Most common use of the term).
- Armor Skirts - Additional armor plates designed to give a tank additional protection, usually placed on the sides over the tracks. See "Spaced Armor".
- Arty/Artillery - Self-Propelled Guns
- Autocannon - An autocannon is a low caliber weapon capable of fully automatic fire (burst-fire in the game), but unlike machine guns, they fire shells instead of bullets. Used in early-war light tanks to give them an edge versus their (at the time) machine gun-armed opponents. However, autocannons rapidly fell behind in the shell-vs-armor race and quickly became used only by a few specialized German reconnaissance vehicles. However, autocannon use vastly expanded in the region of anti-aircraft defense.
- Autoloader - An automatic loading system which allows for a tank to fire multiple shots in succession without a long pause for a reload. Vehicles equipped with autoloaders typically have magazines holding three to eight shots with short load times in-between. Once this magazine has been expended, the vehicle must reload the entire magazine, which usually takes much longer. These are not to be confused with autocannons, which are similar but have a few different characteristics.
- Autoreloader - An automatic loading system which allows for a tank to fire multiple shots in quick successions without a long pause for a reload. Vehicles equipped with autoreloaders typically have magazines holding somewhere between three and five shots with short load times in-between. Unlike autoloaders, autoreloading guns gradually reload back expended shots in the magazine without the need for a lengthy reload.
B
- BiA - The crew skill Brothers in Arms. Less often, this can also refer to the battle hero medal with the same name.
- Blueprints - Special items received only via Rewards for Merit. They are used to give discounts on vehicle research and are rewarded based on battle performance.
- Bounce - A shot that ricocheted off of or failed to penetrate another vehicle.
- Brawling - Close-range, head-to-head fighting. Vehicles which are proficient at brawling are referred to as brawlers. Heavy tanks are most commonly associated with brawling, although it's not uncommon for medium tanks or certain kinds of tank destroyers to do this also. Brawling is different from close-range flanking, which involves attacking another vehicle from its sides or rear rather than head-on.
- Buff - Increasing the effectiveness of a tank, module, or game mechanic by the game developers to compensate for game imbalance.
- BVR - Beyond Visual Range
C
- Caliber - The diameter (usually expressed in centimeters, millimeters or inches) of a gun bore or the rounds it fires. It can also express the length of an a gun barrel as the length of the barrel divided by the diameter of the bore, i.e. 4" x L50 is a barrel 50 times longer than the 4" bore or 200" length barrel.
- Camo Net/Net - Short for Camouflage Net.
- Camping - Sitting stationary in one spot waiting for enemies to come. Though many vehicles need to be played passively, the term is usually used pejoratively to refer to playing passively in a way that is selfish and doesn't contribute to the team's effort. A player who does this is known as a camper.
- Cap - The capture point. Cap or capping typically used as a verb referring to the act of capturing the capture point. It's typically referred to as the Flag when referring to it as a noun.
- Carry - When one tank or group of tanks win a game for their team with little to no help from them.
- Circle/Circling - Driving around a slow tank in a faster and more mobile tank, ideally faster than it can traverse/rotate its turret to track you.
- Clicker - Someone who plays Self-Propelled Guns.
- Critical Hit/Crit - A shot that damages a module or crew member. A critical hit may or may not do damage to the actual tank and subtract hit points (i.e., when a shell hits a vehicle's gun without hitting the vehicle itself).
- Cupola - An elevated (usually either cylindrical or conical) structure on top of a vehicle's hull or turret which a vehicle's commander or other crew member uses to see out of the tank. These structures tend to stick out from the roof of most vehicles, and are often weak spots in their armor.
- CVS - Commander's Vision System, a piece of equipment available for some vehicles.
D
- Derp Gun - A short, inaccurate, high-damage gun with a very long reload time that typically fires high-explosive (HE) ammunition. Most derp guns are low-velocity howitzers, and get their name from their relative easiness to use and low skill shelf.
- Double-Bushed - In a position with a bush (or other camouflage) between you and your opponent where you are far enough back that you cannot see through the bush (normally 15m, see Battle_Mechanics#Camouflage)[1]. Firing from this position will decrease camo value for a short period of time.
- DPM - Short for Damage Per Minute, a count of a gun's potential damage over a minute of sustained fire. DPM can be found by multiplying a gun's alpha damage by it's rate of fire (in rounds per minute). Guns with higher DPM can theoretically do more damage in less time than guns with low DPM.
- Drive Wheel - The sprocket in a tracked vehicle suspension that provides power from the engine and drives the tracks. These wheels are usually positioned at either the front or rear of the tracks, with the unpowered idler wheel on the other end. The drive wheels and idler wheels are usually the best place to shoot a vehicle in order to track it. However on some tanks, all wheels are powered, which can make tracking harder (An example is the MT-25).
F
- Face Hugging - Driving a vehicle up to an enemy and pressing the front of your vehicle against it. This is most commonly done on heavily armored tank to either make the enemy panic or conceal a weak spot low on the vehicle's hull (such as a weak lower glacis).
- Finger of God - Large-caliber SPGs which have the potential to one-shot kill vehicles or deal large amounts of damage to a vehicle in one hit.
- Flanker - A tank which can use its speed and maneuverability to attack the unprotected sides or rear of enemy vehicles. Flankers exploit holes in an enemy team's defenses to attack its tanks from different angles.
G
- GLD/EGLD - Short for Enhanced Gun Laying Drive, a piece of equipment that reduces aim time by 10%.
- Gold Consumables - Consumables that can be purchased with in-game gold or a higher credit price than regular consumables. These consumables are often upgraded version of the cheaper standard consumables and are individually referred to as gold versions of these consumables (ie - a Large First Aid Kit may be called a Gold First Aid Kit).
- Gold Round - Ammunition which can be purchased for in-game gold or a higher credit price than regular rounds. These rounds provide some sort of enhanced capability (usually penetration) verses regular rounds, and usually take the form of HEAT or APCR (although some guns fire APCR or even HEAT as standard ammunition. Other tanks may have AP or even HESH as premium rounds.). Firing gold rounds is sometimes referred to as spamming gold (Although this term is used to describe players that main gold ammunition).
- Grand Battle - A random battle format battle for tier X vehicles played on a larger-than-usual map with 30 players on each side. Introduced in version 9.20[2].
- Grinding - Repeatedly playing games in order to earn experience or credits to use on unlocking higher tier tanks.
- Glacis Plate - Describes the sloped front-most section of the hull of a vehicle. In a head-on-head armored engagement, the glacis is the largest and most obvious target available to an enemy gunner. On many vehicles, the lower half of the glacis (the lower glacis) is a weak spot.
- Gun Elevation - The gun's maximum angle above horizontal (i.e. aiming up).
- Gun Depression - The gun's maximum angle below horizontal (i.e. aiming down).
- Gun Handling - A gun's overall aiming characteristics. Guns with short aim times, good accuracy, and low aim dispersion caused by moving and shooting are considered to have good gun handling.
H
- Hard Stats - Stats that are fixed by historical values and usually cannot be changed for the sake of game balance (ie - a tank's size or armor thickness).
- HUD - Short for Heads up Display.
- Hull Down - A position where a vehicle's hull or lower hull is behind a hill crest or other obstacle, leaving only its turret or superstructure exposed. This is usually done on tanks with strong turrets or superstructures to increase their survivability.
- HVSS - Horizontal volute spring suspension. A type of suspension used on the M4A3E8 Sherman and other tanks. See also VVSS.
I
- Idler Wheel - The unpowered front or rear wheel of a tracked vehicle tracks. This wheel is usually on the opposite end of the drive wheel, and is an area to aim for when attempting to de-track a vehicle.
- IRM - Improved Rotation Mechanism, a piece of equipment available for some vehicles.
K
- KS - Short for Kill Steal. The act at which a player "steals" another player's kill. Steals can be known as killing low HP enemies intentionally with the targets' received damage mostly did not come from the stealer. Players that often doing the steal for their profits, recognition or other selfish reasons are called kill stealers, or KS-ers.
L
- Legionnaire - A player who is a member of another clan or doesn’t have a clan at all, and can be invited into a detachment for Skirmishes or Advances[3].
- Lemming Train - When most (or all) of the vehicles in one team attack one flank and leave the others undefended. This is usually a poor strategy, and leads to most of the people in the lemming train getting killed because of poor coordination. When this happens on both sides the side with the slightly more effective lemming train wins the battle.
- Lit - Another word for "spotted". Spotting can also be referred to as lighting enemy tanks.
- LL - Short for Lend Lease. A tank that was built by one nation and provided to another under the Lend-Lease Act during World War II. For example, "Matilda LL" refers to the Matilda with a Soviet crew as opposed to the British Matilda.
M
- Mantlet/Gun Mantlet - The moving part of armor attached to a vehicle's gun. The gun mantlet acts as spaced armor, and is often very thick and difficult to penetrate (although lack of armor behind a gun mantlet can make it a weak spot on some tanks).
- MM - Short for Match Maker or Matchmaking.
- Mod (game modification) - Short for modification. A mod changes the game's visuals, sound, or interface. Mods can be either legal or illegal depending on what they do.
- Mod (staff) - Short for moderator, a staff member who regulates the community.
- MoE - Mark of Excellence, see Achievements.
- Muzzle Velocity - The speed at which a round leaves the gun barrel. The penetration ability of armor piercing and armor piercing, composite, rigid rounds is greatly affected by muzzle velocity.
N
- Nerf - Decreasing the effectiveness of a tank, module, or game mechanic by the game developers to compensate for game imbalance.
- Newb/Newbie/Noob - A truly new player who is inexperienced and learning the game. Also used to refer to experienced players who just made a mistake that a new player would be likely to make (e.g. "Come on <Player>, stop being a noob!").
- Normalization - An effect that causes AP and APCR shells angle verses a plate of armor to decrease upon impact. This gives these shells a greater chance to penetrate armor which is well angled.
- NS - Short for "nice shot".
O
- o7, <O or o> - Salute emoticon, often used to greet friends or used as a friendly gesture.
- Overmatching - A mechanic which gives AP and APCR shells an increased chance to penetrate well angled armor which is half the thickness of their caliber size as well as the ability to penetrate armor a third of their caliber size at any angle.
- OP - Overpowered, used to describe a tank that is too powerful, or isn't balanced correctly
P
- Peek-a-boo/Peek-a-boom/Peek-a-blam - The act of quickly poking around a corner, shooting, and then immediately reversing back into cover.
- Pen - Short for penetration. This can refer to either the penetration rating of a gun or the actual act of penetrating a vehicle with a round.
- Permatrack - To continually immobilize an enemy by repeatedly shooting his tracks at a rate where his automatic repair rate for the suspension cannot fix them before the next round hits.
- Premium Account - Status which gives a 50% bonus on credits and experience earned in battle plus a clean garage. Normally purchased for gold, but can also be received as a bonus or with an invite code.
- Premium Consumables - See Gold Consumables
- Premium Rounds - See Gold Rounds
- Puppy Kicker - An overpowered tank that people play with (usually with premium rounds and consumables) to troll and boost their win rate and whose use is generally shamed upon.
Q
- QB - QuickyBaby, a well-known World of Tanks commentator with a YouTube channel.
R
- Racked - See Ammo Racked
- RNG - Short for Random Number Generation, the method by which shot spread and damage variance is calculated. RNG is often blamed for off-center shots or shots which do low amounts of damage. Less often, RNG is also used to refer to other random number generations.
- RTB - Return To Base
- Rush - To charge an enemy or position in numbers, usually with little regard to one's own safety.
S
- Scout - A tank that attempts to spot other vehicles. Scouting is usually associated with light tanks with good radios and the ability to maintain full camo while moving (not all light tanks have this ability), although any tank can do it if necessary.
- Seal Clubber - An experienced player who plays in the lower tiers in order to fight new, inexperienced players. This is often done to get easy wins and increase the player's stats. Note that the player's intention is key here. Playing low tier simply to play a tank that happens to be of low tier is not considered Seal Clubbing.
- Shotgun - When a Self Propelled Gun destroys a tank without aiming that's driving close.
- Side Scraping - A technique where a player slowly reverses into the open at a shallow angle, revealing only the heavily angled side of their tank. This technique is usually used on tanks with thick side armor or tracks in order to increase their survivability. This is an alternative to the Peek-a-boo technique listed above.
- Siege Mode - A mode which improves gun handling (better dispersion, load time, etc.) but reduces forward/reverse speed. First available on Swedish tank destroyers with hydro-pneumatic suspension such as the S22_Strv_S1. Switch between siege mode and travel mode using the 'X' key. Stats are hard to find on WoT sites but tanks.gg allows you to toggle siege mode to compare. (May be misspelled as "seige mode".)
- Skin - A cosmetic mod that changes the appearance of an in-game texture. Skins are usually used to change the appearance of vehicles. This is different than the purchasable in-game camouflage, since it's a mod that only affects what the player sees, not what other players see.
- Skill Rounds - A different term used for Premium Ammunition.
- Sniper - A vehicle which positions itself far away from the front lines and takes shots at vehicles from a distance. Generally these snipers have guns with very good accuracy, usually high damage, a high camouflage coefficient, and sometimes poor armor.
- Soft Stats - Stats that are not fixed by historical specifications and can be changed to affect game balance.
- Spaced Armor - Armor plates which are placed separately from a vehicle's main armor, with a gap in-between the two. Spaced armor provides greater protection from high explosive and high explosive anti-tank rounds, which can detonate on it before reaching a vehicle's actual armor. Tracks also behave like spaced armor.
- Sponson - A structure extending out of the side of a vehicle's hull which serves as an area to mount a gun.
- Spotter - Any tank that spots enemy vehicles for artillery, TDs, and/or snipers, allowing them to fire beyond their own visual range. This can be intentional (See Scout) or it can be coincidental. For example, an artillery player might say "No spotters" when a request for fire is made.
- Sprem/Spremmo - Short for Silver Premium. The term is often used pejoratively to describe indiscriminate spamming of premium rounds.
- Statpadder - Refers to someone who uses certain tank to inflate stats. Statpadder's stats may give a artificial picture of the player, making him seem better than he actually is. Also see Seal Clubber
- Stock - The beginning state of a vehicle, before any of its modules have been unlocked and mounted. Stock tanks almost always perform worse than their upgraded counterparts.
- Stun - The effect from high explosive artillery shells 150mm or more within the burst/splash radius which temporarily decreases capabilities of the crew/vehicle. Introduced in update 9.18.
- Suiscout/Suicide Scout - The act of scouting by immediately charging deep into the enemy lines at the beginning of the game. This is usually done with little regard to one's survival, and almost always results in the scout dying. It is rarely an effective way to scout enemy tanks, as they will often be out of range of allies, or who haven't gotten a chance to position themselves yet, except the team's artillery.
- Support - Taking a secondary role to other vehicles, who are needed either to spot or draw fire from enemy vehicles. Support vehicles are often lacking in some aspect (poor armor, poor view range, etc.) but are strong in other aspects and can be very effective if combined with cooperative teammates. Artillery is an example of a vehicle class whose role is almost purely support.
T
- TK/Team Kill - Killing an allied tank, whether on purpose or by accident. The names and outlines of players who team damage/team kill show up in blue.
- Tomato - A pejorative term used to describe players who have poor win rate statistics. The term is derived the the color coding used by stat-tracking websites and mods, which display low or bad statistics in red.
- Tracking/Tracked - Short for "de-tracking", or rendering a vehicle immobile by way of destroying its tracks.
- Tumor - A large, obvious weak spot in a vehicles armor that serves no functional purpose and is only a hindrance. Many cupolas, anti-aircraft guns, mini-turrets, and sponsons on various tanks are considered tumors.
- Turret Ring - The area between a turret and the vehicle's hull that allows the two to move independently of each other. Though usually small, the turret ring is often a weak spot and damaging it can result in either slower turret traverse or jamming the turret altogether.
U
- Unicum/Unicorn - A name for one of the top players in the game, in terms of personal statistics. Usually refers to Winrate and WN8 Stats. From Latin ūnicus.
V
- VertStab/VStab - Short for Vertical Stabilizer
- VVSS - Vertical volute spring suspension. A type of suspension used on the M4 Sherman and other tanks. See also HVSS.
W
- Wallet Warrior - A premium tank player. It can be used to describe players who buy a lot of premium tanks, or pejoratively to describe inexperienced players who buy their way into the higher tiers by using a premium tank.
- Wolfpack - A group of highly coordinated medium or light tanks working together to take down single targets.
X
- XVM (eXtended Visualization Mod) - A popular game mod which provides a number of interface tweaks. Most popular among the mod's features is a plugin which displays the color-coded win rates and statistics of other players in the match interface. This is used to gauge the skill of other players in the match, and has lead to the creation of terms to describe players of different skill levels by the color coding of their statistics (see Tomato and Unicum).
Y
- YOLO - You Only Live Once. To be reckless with ones life. Can also mean to play recklessly
Ammunition Abbreviations
See Also: Ammo
- AP - Armor Piercing rounds. Armor piercing rounds, as their name suggests, are designed to pierce the armor of heavily protected armored fighting vehicles. AP rounds are the standard ammunition for most direct-fire vehicles in the game, and sometimes are premium ammunition for some artillery.
- APCR - Armor Piercing, Composite, Rigid rounds. Composite rounds are also designed to pierce armor, and are comprised of a dense, sub-caliber core surrounded by a lightweight ballistic shell. These shells have greater penetration values and higher muzzle velocities than armor piercing rounds, but react more adversely to angled armor. APCR rounds are premium ammunition for most direct-fire vehicles in the game, and are standard rounds for some higher-tier vehicles.
- HE - High Explosive rounds. High explosive rounds explode on impact, and their armor penetration ability is derived from their strength as explosives. They have higher alpha damage than other types of ammo, but are unreliable for penetrating thick or spaced armor. Typically, HE rounds are used for their utility for resetting caps, demolishing cover, or attacking poorly armored targets. HE rounds are standard secondary ammunition for most direct-fire vehicles in the game, and are the standard ammunition for almost all artillery.
- HEAT - High Explosive, Anti-Tank rounds. High explosive anti-tank rounds use a shaped explosive charge to sear a hole in a vehicle's armor. This means that their penetration ability is determined by the amount of explosive the round carries, rather than weight and muzzle velocity. HEAT rounds react adversely to well-angled armor, and can harmlessly pre-detonate on spaced armor. HEAT rounds are premium ammunition for some high-caliber, direct fire vehicles in the game or those that shoot APCR as standard ammunition. HEAT is also the premium ammunition for most artillery.
- HESH - High Explosive Squash Head rounds. High explosive squash head rounds are rounds which spread an explosive "paste" on the surface they hit which explodes and causes spalling, wounding or killing the crew inside of the structure it hits. In-game, the realistic properties of HESH are not simulated, and HESH rounds are simply HE rounds with high penetration values (and are labeled as HE as well). HESH rounds are the premium ammunition on some high-tier vehicles (usually British).
Vehicle Shorthand (Guide)
In battle there often isn't time to type full names. Many players don't know how to touch-type, for one thing, and battle doesn't allow much time to begin with.
1) It's very typical in battles for players to refer to specific vehicles in shorthand. This is often done by only listing the model number. For example, "212" instead of "Object 212". If you aren't sure, you can review the list of tanks in the battle on the side of the screen in detail by pressing the Tab key. Once you familiarize yourself with most of the tank names, you shouldn't have any problems. Shorthand may vary somewhat according to the tanks in the battle. For instance if there were VK 30.01 (H)'s in the battle, but no VK 30.01 (P)'s, a player may leave off the H and just say "3001". Some other examples:
- 212 instead of Object 212
- 3001H instead of VK 30.01 (H)
- 140, or 430, or 416 often used for Russian medium tanks instead of Object 140, Object 430 and Object 416
2) Another common tendency, especially when talking to friendlies, is to only use the prefix. For example, if you're the only VK model on the team, players will most likely refer to you as "VK" instead of by your tank's model number. AMX, KV, IS, M4, AT and GW are other common prefixes used.
3) Models that don't have numbers and have unique names are often shortened. Some examples:
- Ferdi instead of Ferdinand
- BatChat, or just Bat, instead of Bat Chatillon 25 t
- Patton instead of M46 Patton
- Borsig instead of Rhm.-Borsig Waffenträger
4) Likewise, players might shorten a name using initials, such as:
- JT - Nickname for the Jagdtiger
- CGC - Nickname for the Conqueror Gun Carriage
- WTF - Nickname for the Waffenträger auf E 100
5) Sometimes a player may simply not have time to even worry about identifying you specifically and say "VK" even though there are four VKs on your team. For example, "VK behind you!". Usually this is done because the player typing doesn't know your model number and doesn't have time to look. However, in most situations this should be avoided because in this example, it would confuse the other three VKs, possibly getting them killed as they look behind them for enemies that aren't there.
Map Nicknames
Even some maps have nicknames.
- Erlenberg - Derpenberg
- Malinovka - Campinovka
- Murovanka - Muro-wank-a
- Mittengard - Noob gardens, Kittengardens, Deathmatch 2000 Bowl
- Himmelsdorf - Himmelsderp
Vehicle Nicknames
A number of vehicles in the game have been given nicknames by the community. These names are either derived from their distinguishing characteristics or are made to shorten their longer technical names. Only a few are nicknames that were used in real life. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list of every nickname in the game.
USSR
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Germany
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Sweden
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USA
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France
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UK
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China
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Italy
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Japan
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References
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