Skateboarding Vocabulary in English — 20 Essential Terms

A complete skateboard is made of a few key parts. The deck is the flat wooden board you stand on, usually built from layers of pressed maple with an upturned nose and tail. The trucks are the two metal axles bolted underneath that hold the wheels and let the board turn. The wheels are four polyurethane discs that roll on the ground, and inside each wheel are the bearings, small steel rings that let it spin freely and fast. Finally, grip tape — a rough, sandpaper-like sheet — is stuck to the top of the deck so the skater's shoes do not slip.

The ollie is the foundational trick of street and park skateboarding because almost every other trick is built on top of it. It is the move that lets a skater and their board jump into the air together without holding the board with their hands, by sharply popping the tail down and sliding the front foot up the deck. Once you can ollie, you can begin to learn flip tricks like the kickflip, jump up onto ledges, and clear obstacles. This is why coaches and tutorials almost always teach the ollie first and treat it as the gateway to the rest of the sport.

Both are flip tricks built on the ollie, in which the board spins a full rotation along its length before you catch it again with your feet, but they differ in how the spin is started. For a kickflip, you flick the side of the deck with your toes (the front of your front foot), which makes the board flip towards you. For a heelflip, you flick outward with your heel instead, which makes the board flip in the opposite direction, away from you. Many skaters find that once they can land one of the two reliably, learning the other becomes much easier because the timing and pop are so similar.

Both tricks involve travelling along an edge, rail, or ledge, but the difference is which part of the board makes contact. In a grind, the skater slides along on the metal trucks — the axles — so you hear the characteristic scraping of metal on the edge. In a slide, the contact is on the underside of the wooden deck itself, as in a boardslide where the middle of the board glides along the rail. Both require an ollie to get up onto the obstacle, good balance to stay locked on, and control to come off cleanly at the end.

These three terms all describe the stance or direction a trick is performed in, which is what makes them confusing for beginners. Fakie means riding backwards while keeping your feet in their normal positions — the board simply rolls the opposite way. Switch means skating in the opposite stance to your natural one, so a regular-footed skater rides as though they were goofy-footed; it feels awkward and is highly respected. Nollie, short for ‘nose ollie’, means popping the trick off the nose of the board with your front foot while rolling forward, instead of off the tail. Mastering tricks in all these variations greatly expands what a skater can do.

Backside and frontside describe the direction of a turn, spin, or approach to an obstacle relative to the way the skater's body faces. In a frontside trick, the skater's chest and the front of their body face the obstacle or turn into the direction of rotation. In a backside trick, their back faces the obstacle or sweeps around towards the direction of rotation. These terms apply to turns, spins, grinds, and ramp tricks alike — for example, a frontside 180 versus a backside 180 — and getting them right is essential for following tutorials and naming tricks correctly.

A manual is a balancing trick in which the skater rolls along on only two wheels, lifting the other end of the board off the ground — rather like a wheelie on a bicycle. Rolling on the back two wheels is simply called a manual, while balancing on the front two is a nose manual. The challenge is to hold the balance for as long as possible without letting the raised end drop or the board tip too far. Manuals are popular in street skating because they can be linked between tricks to create long, flowing combinations across a plaza or car park.

To bail means to deliberately abandon a trick that is going wrong, usually by jumping off the board and landing on your feet, in order to avoid a worse, uncontrolled fall. Bailing is an important safety skill, not a failure — experienced skaters learn to recognise the instant a trick has gone wrong and step off cleanly rather than ride it into a hard crash. The word is also used more loosely to mean falling off. Learning to bail well, including how to roll out of a fall, is one of the most useful things a beginner can practise.

A half-pipe is a U-shaped ramp with two curved walls, called transitions, facing each other across a flat bottom. Skaters drop in from the top of one wall, roll down and across the flat, and ride up the opposite wall, ‘pumping’ with their legs to build speed. At the top of each wall they can perform aerial tricks — airs and spins — before dropping back in. Half-pipes range from small, low ramps to the huge ‘vert’ ramps seen in major competitions. Skating a half-pipe is a different discipline from street skating and develops a distinct set of skills.

The most enjoyable and effective way is to immerse yourself in skate culture in English. Watch trick tutorials and skate videos, where you will hear words like ollie, grind, and bail used naturally and see exactly what they mean. Try narrating tricks yourself, naming each one as you attempt it or watch it. Reading skateboarding magazines, forums, and social media in English will reinforce the slang and culture-specific terms. Then practise the 20 words on this page with Flash Cards on LexFizz, and test your recall with the Matching Pairs exercise to lock them in.