Cheesing, Meta, Wombo Combo: Which Gamer Slang Is Most (and Least) Popular?

If you don’t understand what gamers are saying, you’re not alone. But some of the new slang terms have bigger fans than others—and some is downright divisive.

LetterSolver(Opens in a new window)—a word-game helper site—went spelunking into the many slang terms found at Urban Dictionary(Opens in a new window). Based on the up or down votes of each term, LetterSolver whipped up some infographics for several categories—in particular for our audience, gamers.

(Credit: LetterSolver)

The top three terms gamers love: throwing (as in throwing a game by not playing properly), meta (short for “most effective tactics available” to win), and the rhyming masterpiece of wombo combo (a term for the in-game killer combo of keystrokes or moves, a term that goes all the way back to Super Smash Bros. Melee(Opens in a new window)).

Gamers don’t like cheesing (using game flaws to win), loot (the money taken, or the act of taking money), and grinding (aka treadmilling, which is doing something repetitive to earn or take something). Among others.

Cheesing and loot also make the list of the “most divisive” slang, along with NGMI (“not gonna make it”) and hash(Opens in a new window) for cryptocurrency users. The divide is how small the difference is between people who up or down vote the term. Cheesing, for example, has almost as many haters as it does lovers.

(Credit: LetterSolver)

For a complete look at the charts of slang—including an interactive chart you can reorder to see where the terms fall in the lists—visit LetterSolver(Opens in a new window). You’ll be chuffed that you did. That’s no clapback.