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Street Fighter terminology, acronyms, lexicon and glossary guide

Last updated on May 9, 2008

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Most Street Fighter players have experienced this at one point or another. Someone throws out some terminology that's second nature to them, but you have no idea what they're talking about.

Now hopefully you'll understand them a little better with this guide. To find something specific, just press ctrl+f to search this page.

Combos and tactics

BnB, Bread and Butter: Refers to a bread and butter combo or technique for a character. Usually this is one combo or technique that almost everyone uses because it's highly effective.

Meaty, early, getting-up moves: This means to use a move as your opponent is getting up so that only a few frames of the animation hit them, instead of all of the frames of animation. Meaty moves tend to have big active frames — frames where your opponent can be hit — making it easier to land an attack as the other fighter stands.

A Meaty move is useful because it shortens the wait time before you can do another move, which leads to many additional set ups and throw tactics.

Cheaps, Throws and Cheese: This means hurting your opponent with moves that people deem too easy to do, or too powerful. For example, in the Street Fighter 2 series, some players consider excessive throwing to be cheap, as it does a good bit of damage and can be hard to counter if you do not know how.

But most players seem to believe, "All is fair in love and war, and Street Fighter," and as such throwing or using almost anything else isn't taboo.

Canceling, Cancel, Super Canceling, Cancelable, 2in1, Buffering: These mean to cancel the animation of one move to go into another. If something is, "cancelable," that means you can interrupt the animation of this move with another. For a more detailed explanation see this page.

Link: Timing the ending animation of one move so that the next move you do comes out at the precise moment the other one ends, resulting in a combo. For a more detailed explanation see this page.

Chain, Dial-a-combo: A Chain combo is when specific normal moves cancel into each other. For example in Street Fighter 3 3rd Strike, by pressing standing light punch, light kick and then medium punch in quick succession with Yun he will perform a 3-hit combo. For a more detailed explanation see this page.

Tick throwing: To do a quick or mostly safe attack and then immediately throw your opponent. Usually this is difficult to counter and easy to do.

Whiff, Miss: A move that misses the other character entirely, sometimes done deliberately to set up another move, or bait the opponent into thinking your guard is down.

Street Fighter lingo

Lag tactics: Using/abusing the lag (latency) associated with online play to do tactics that normally aren't viable if you were playing someone face to face.

Dropper, Puller: Someone who leaves X-Box Live! matches when they lose before the match is over, resulting in the other player not receiving a win.

GGs, Good games: Commonly said to another player after a match or a set of matches whether they earned it or not as a sign of respect and good nature.

Scrub: Someone who thinks they're a great player, but actually sucks.

XBL, X-Box Live!: Microsoft's online gaming service where people can play Street Fighter over the Internet.

Moves

UOH, Universal Overhead Hit: In Street Fighter 3 Third Strike this is done by pressing Medium Punch and Medium Kick at the same time with the joystick in a neutral position. This will hit a character blocking low.

Super, SA1, SA2, SA3, Super Art, Super Move: A super move is most often a more powerful version of a normal move and usually requires your, "super meter," to be at a certain level to execute. The SA1, SA2 and SA3 acronyms refer to Street Fighter 3 Super Arts. Each one has a Roman numeral attached to it. For example, Yun's Genei Jin has a Roman number III in it, so it would be referred to as an, "SA3," which stands for Super Art III.

Parrying, Teching: First introduced Street Fighter 3. It's done by tapping forward for high attacks and down for low attacks at the moment of impact. It enables the person who parries to avoid damage or to counter-attack without block or hit stun.

Red Parrying, Guard Parrying: A red parry is accomplished by blocking a single attack of a move that hits multiple times and then parrying one of the later hits. For example, Dudley's Machine Gun Blow hits several times, if you block the first hit and then parry one the later attacks, your parry will flash a red color instead. Just simply a different way of parrying, no extra bonuses are given.

Air Parrying: In Street Fighter 3 Third Strike this is done by tapping forward at the moment of impact when being attacked while you're jumping. You cannot tap down to parry attacks in the air.

QCF, Quarter-circle forward: To roll the joystick from the down to forward position.

QCB, Quarter-circle backward: To roll the joystick from the down to back position.

HCF, Half-circle forward: To roll the joystick from the back to forward position.

HCB, Half-circle backward: To roll the joystick from the forward to back position.

360, SPD, Screw-pile driver, Spinning pile driver: To roll the joystick hitting 7 points on it. It's a popular misconception that you have to go all the way around to successfully pull off a 360, when in reality you only have to hit 7 points.

LP, Light Punch, Jab: The weakest punch button.

MP, Medium Punch, Strong: The medium strength punch button.

HP, Hard Punch, Fierce: The strongest punch button.

LK, Light Kick, Short: The weakest kick button.

MK, Medium Kick, Forward: The medium strength kick button.

HK, Hard Kick, Roundhouse: The strongest kick button.

Fireball, FB, Hadoken, Projectile: If rolling the joystick from down to forward and pressing punch results in a projectile, many people refer to this as a fireball, or the fireball motion. An extremely common term in most fighting games to refer to a character's projectile attack.

Shoryuken, Uppercut, DP, Dragon Punch: This move has went by many different names over the years. It's performed by pressing forward and then down and rolling the stick to down/forward position and pressing punch.

Characters

Balrog, Boxer, M. Bison (Japan): Balrog's name was changed from M(ike). Bison when Street Fighter 2 was released in the United States because Capcom was afraid of a lawsuit from Mike Tyson, whom Balrog closely resembles.

Thus in some circles he's simply known as the, "Boxer," to avoid confusion.

M. Bison, Dictator, Vega (Japan): When Street Fighter 2 was pitched to Capcom USA's marketing department, they believed that the name Vega was a weakling's name.

As such his name was changed from Vega in the Japanese release to M. Bison. To avoid confusion people refer to him as the, "Dictator."

Vega, Claw, Balrog (Japan): Originally known as Balrog in the Japanese release of Street Fighter 2, Vega had his name changed along with two other boss characters.

To avoid confusion people refer to him as the, "Claw."

Games

SF2 WW: Street Fighter 2 The World Warrior.

SF2 CE: Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition.

SF2 HF, Turbo: Street Fighter 2 Hyper Fighting.

SSF2: Super Street Fighter 2.

SSF2T, ST: Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo.

SFA, Alpha: Street Fighter Alpha.

SFA2, Alpha 2: Street Fighter Alpha 2.

SFA3, Alpha 3: Street Fighter Alpha 3.

XvsSF: X-Men vs. Street Fighter

MvsSF, MSHvsSF: Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter

MvC, MvC1: Marvel vs. Capcom

MvC2: Marvel vs. Capcom 2

CvS: Capcom vs. SNK

CvS2: Capcom vs. SNK 2

SF3: Street Fighter 3, New Generation

SF3, 2i: Street Fighter 3, 2nd Impact

SF3, 3s: Street Fighter 3, 3rd Strike

More content coming soon...