League of Legends Key Terms

If you just jumped into League of Legends, maybe the amount of terminology and vocabulary specific to the game can seem frightening at first. If you feel like you have a lot to catch up on, or if you want to understand what it means when your botlane shouts that you’re an “inter“: we are here to make it easier for you with this League of Legends glossary. Here are some of the key terms you should know when entering the Summoner’s Rift. And if you want to make the most of your time on LoL, make sure to also check all of our updated guides for the 2025 season.

LEAGUE OF LEGENDS KEY TERMS:

Auto Attack: AKA Basic Attack or AA. An attack that every champion triggers automatically after you clicked on an enemy entity.

Ability/Spell: An unique action performed by a specific champion. An ability is different from a summoner spell or active abilities as other champions can use these.

ACE:  An ace is earned when all five players on the enemy team got killed.

AD: AD is short for attack damage. Certain items grant extra attack damage that AD scaling champions benefit from.

ADC: Short for Attack Damage Carry. A champion that deals high amounts of damage – specifically as the game progresses. This can also refer to the role taken when playing the bot lane. ADCs are now also referred to as Marksmen.

AoE: Short for Area of Effect. Spells or attacks that deal damage over a wide-spread area.

AP: AP is short for ability power. AP is the damage that champions like mages use to gain power.

Assassin: Assassins are a type of Champion that dish out burst damage and have tools to get in and get out of fights quickly.

Backline: The furthest combat distance from enemy champions. The backline is composed of range and mage champions. These champions are typically low in health, but high in damage output, so they are to be as protected as possible.

Backdoor: When you attack an opponent’s Nexus while they are focused elsewhere. This is done by sneaking through the jungle, or by teleporting to an allied minion or ward near the enemy base and taking the enemy by surprise.

Ban: Every player can ban one champion during the draft phase, which means he will not be playable in this game (either by allies or enemies).

Baron: Officially known as the Baron Nashor. The Baron is the strongest neutral enemy in the game. Once a team has defeated the Baron, all living teammates earn the Hand of Baron buff. The buff rewards teammates with bonus attack damage, bonus ability power, an empowered recall buff and increases the power of nearby friendly minions.

Base: Each team has a base, which is located between the entrances to the middle and bottom lanes along with a base entrance at the top and middle lanes. Players can heal along with upgrading their champion.

Bot: Short for Bottom Lane. The bot lane is the bottom of the three lanes on Summoner’s Rift. Can also refer to an AI-controlled champion.

BOTRK: The item Blade of The Ruined King.

Buff: A beneficial spell or effect used on yourself, a teammate or a friendly minion. The opposite of debuff.

Burst: A large amount of damage dealt in a short amount of time – specifically to a specific champion.

CC: AKA Crowd Control. A group of status effects that limit an opponent’s movement or actions. CC comes in the form of stuns, slows, polymorphs, knock-ups, etc.

Cooldown: The amount of time it takes for a skill or ability to be usable again after a first usage.

Champion: Player-controlled characters. Each champion has unique skills, abilities, and attributes.

Commit: To stay in a fight until it is over. To not retreat.

Countergank: Setting up an ambush in response to an opponent ambush. See gank.

Counterjungle: To kill the monsters in the opponent’s side of the jungle. This takes away easier buffs, gold and experience for the opposing team.

Crit: Short for Critical Strike.  An ability or attack that deals twice the damage. You can increase the likelihood of getting a crit by buying certain items.

CS: Short for Creep Score. A term borrowed from Dota 2 – CS is the number of enemy creeps that you performed the last hit on and obtained gold from.

Death Timer: The amount of time it takes for a champion to respawn after being slain.

DPS: Short for Damage per second. The amount of damage that dealt per second by a hero.

Draft: It’s a phase before any “Draft”/Ranked game where every player has to ban a champion and pick the champion he will play

Dragon Soul: When a team takes their fourth drake, they will gain the Dragon Soul. There are four dragon souls that each offer different buffs and they become permanent buffs for the remainder of the game.

Drake: AKA Dragon. This powerful neutral monster is found in the Summoner’s Rift. Killing a Drake grants your team various effects and buffs.

Dive: To chase a specific enemy unit into a dangerous area – typically near a turret.

Early Game: The early is arguably a game state that goes from the start of a game, to the first turret that falls. Basically, the laning phase and the first stages of the game.

Elder Dragon: The Elder Dragon is the final dragon. The Elder Dragon only spawns after the dragon soul has been decided. This dragon is tougher than all the other dragons and gives a buff that allows the receiving team to execute enemy champions at a certain threshold, in addition to a burning passive on every enemy you hit with a spell/AA.

Engage: To engage a fight, most of the time this is the role of a tank or the support.

Farming: The act of killing creeps for gold and experience.

Fed: When someone is fed, it means that he has a lot of gold compared to the other players in the game.

FF: AKA Forfeit, every player can trigger a forfeit vote after 15 minutes into a game.

Flank: A military term. Attacking an enemy – either solo or as a team – by splitting up and surrounding them. Specifically, when a champion sneaks past the frontline to attack the backline champions – typically the job of fighters, bruisers or assassins

Flash: A spell that allows a champion to teleport a short distance.

Freeze: Freezing the lane means that you have stacked enough enemy minions close to your tower for the wave to stop bouncing. Then, if your opponent wants to farm, he has to take the risk that you get in range to hit him, or that your jungler gets a window to gank him.

Frontline: The front of the combat group that can soak a lot of damage.

Front to back: Hiting the first ennemy in range during teamfights, to not dive and go for the backline but basically going for the frontline first.

Fighter: A type of Champion that can typically take lots of damage and deal a moderate amount of damage in return. Also known as a bruiser.

First Blood: The first kill taken by a player in a game.

Gank: To ambush an enemy.

Inhib: Short for Inhibitor. A structure that blocks the spawning of super minions from the opposing team. Each team has three Inhibitors in their base, each corresponding to a lane.$

Inting/Inter: AKA intentionally feeding. Dying to enemies and giving them gold intentionally. But the usage has change, and now it is often used when a player is dying a lot.

Jungler: A Jungler is a type of champion that stays primarily in the jungle. A Jungler is in charge of clearing neutral camps within the jungle and helping their team with objectives, ganks and towers whenever possible.

KDA: A statistic you get based on your ratio of Kills/Deaths/Assists.

Lane: The Summoner’s Rift is separated into three main lanes: the top lane, the middle lane, and the bottom lane. These three lanes are where minions travel from one side of the map to the other.

Lane Swap: The act of one or more champions switching dedicated lanes.

Laning Phase: A phase within a match that can last from 10 to 20 minutes. This phase is based around champions gaining gold by farming minions, towers or enemy champions.

Last Hit: The final blow on an opposing minion, creep or champion.

Late Game: The late game refers to the state where the game is touching to its end, where the final objectives are spawning (Nashor, Soul, Elder Dragon…), when most of the champions have three items or more etc. You arguably enter the late game when you hit the 25 to 30 minutes mark.

Minion: Non-player characters (NPCs) that spawn from each team’s base.

Mid Game: The mid game is a game state that arguably occurs after the first turret fell. When all the dynamics are changed in the map, no more laning phase and much more important objective control/fights.

Mid Laner: A champion dedicated to the midlane.

Nexus: The large structure in each base. The objective of League of Legends is to destroy the opponents’ Nexus.

Passive: Every champion in the game has a passive ability in his kit. The passive can’t be triggered directly by pressing a keyboard’s key, like the other abilities of a champion. Some items also have passives.

Peel: To defend/protect a player, usually the carrys.

Picks: Each team gets five champions to select during the draft phase.

Push: Advancing forward in a lane.

Recall: An ability that all champions have that allows them to teleport back to the team’s fountain. Requires eight seconds. The Baron buff or the Rift Herald buff can shorten this to four seconds as long as the buff persists.

Rift Herald: A monster that spawns in the Baron Pit on the eighth minute. Grants a buff that allows the user to spawn the Herald for your team to help siege towers.

Scaling: A champion evolution through a game, with items and xp. Some champions have a very good scaling and others are better in the early stages for example.

Shotcaller: The player on a team that takes the lead in communication.

Side Lanes: The botlane and the toplane (which are on the sides of the map).

Slow Push: Only taking the last hit on creeps, to create the biggest possible wave of minions that will slowly crash into the enemy tower.

Smite: A summoner that every jungler needs to take before the start of the game. When triggered on a jungle monster, the Smite instantly strikes it to inflinct 600 – 1200 brut damages.

Smurf: A player who plays on a secondary account, at a lower rank than his main.

Solo Lane: Being the only champion in a specific lane.

Splitpush: When a champion or group of champions switch to another lane that is weak or susceptible to attack.

Stun: A stunned unit or champion will be unable to control abilities, movement, attacks, or active abilities.

Summs: AKA Summoner Spells, each player has access to two Sums in every game, which they can chose before the game start – during the draft phase. You’ll have one slot reserved for the Flash, in most cases.

Super Minion: Super Minions are upgraded minions that only spawn with the enemy’s inhibitor is destroyed.

Support: A type of champion that dedicates themselves to helping the team with heals, shields, or CC. Tends to spend the early game laning with the marksman.

Squishy: A champion with low health. Can only take little damage before dying.

Tank: A champion that can take massive amounts of damage.

Teamfight: When multiple champions from each team engage in a fight.

Top Laner: A champion dedicated to the top lane.

TP: AKA Teleportation, a summs that can be used to channel a teleportation on a ward, a turret or a minion anywhere on the map.

Trade: There are many different uses for the word trade. You can trade with your opponent in lane, which means you exchanged a few blows. But you can also trade on the map. Which means that if the enemy team makes a play botside, you will sometimes trade with them by making a play on the opposite side of the map (topside in this example).

Turret: AKA a tower. A structure that blocks the enemy’s path to the Nexus. They take high damage and fire at opponents within a certain radius.

Ulti: Each champion’s most powerful ability. These don’t become available until level six.

Ward: An invisible beacon that grant vision in the area it got placed for 90 – 120 seconds.

Pink Ward: AKA Control Ward. Same as the normal ward, but it has one more hp and reveal the enemy wards in the area it got placed.

Red Trinket: AKA Oracle Lens. When activated by a champion, reveal the enemy wards around him for a few seconds.

Blue Trinket: AKA Farsight Alteration. A ward that grant vision in an small area, can be placed from a far distance.

Zoning: The act of pushing an enemy champion(s) away from certain objectives to prevent gold and experience gain.

This comprehensive list of terms contains terminologies that every League of Legends player should know before jumping into a match. Check in to refresh your memory or quiz your friends with our handy guide.