Surfing is one of those activities where most people know more about the stereotypes than they do about the actual sport.
But it’s definitely true that it has, over the years, built up a huge lexicon of slang and specialist terms to describe different areas and aspects of surfing.
Today, we’re going to look at some of these terms and help you understand what they mean and perhaps where they come from.
Let’s get started.
Header
Let’s start with one of surfers’ favorite things to name—falling off.
A header means you fall off the surfboard from the front and go head first into the water.
This will happen to you eventually while surfing!
Grubbing
Following on from that, a good, catch-all term for falling off while surfing is grubbing.
This is used particularly in North America although it is also used all over the global surfing scene.
However you’ve fallen, you’ve grubbed.
Grom
And who is the most likely to grub while surfing?
The groms!
A grom is a young surfer without a lot of experience, who is learning the sport.
They are also sometimes called grommets.
Amped
This is used in general slang too, but it is heavily associated with surfers.
To be amped means to be very excited or worked up about something.
You’re really pumped up, amped to go surfing.
360
This one is fairly intuitive, though it’s very hard to do in reality.
It means to turn the board a full 360 degrees while riding a wave, or to do an entire revolution.
You see this term in many kinds of sports.
Backdoor
There are many terms to describe different parts of waves or the surfer’s relationship to waves.
Backdoor means going inside the tube or barrel of a wave, from behind the wave’s peak.
Bailing
Here we have yet another term for falling off, although this one describes a deliberate fall.
There might be many reasons you bail to avoid an encounter with another surfer or perhaps with a wave that’s too big.
Hang eleven
This one you might not be too thrilled if you saw in the flesh.
To hang eleven means, for a male surfer, to ride in the nude.
I’ll let you figure out why they use this term for this on your own!
Impact zone
Another area where terminology for surfers is really important is the difference between newbies and experienced surfers.
The impact zone describes an area where the waves break with most force, where beginners may injure themselves.
Men in grey suits
This is a funny one, describing not a part of surfing but an important thing to be aware of, depending on where you are: sharks.
They are the men in grey suits, so if you hear someone scream that, be sure to get to shore.
Noodle arms
Again, this one you might hear in other types of slang.
To have noodle arms means to have tired arms, flopping around like noodles.
Surfers’ arms do tend to get really tired!
Nug
This one’s nice and simple: a nug just means a good wave.
There are obviously many other ways to describe a wave, but this is a catch all term for good waves.
Party wave
In the busiest surfing beaches, you might get a lot of party waves—that is, waves which are being ridden by multiple people at once.
Not always very safe!
Sketchy
If you ever hear someone say your surfing is sketchy, listen to their advice—because this means you have bad surfing form.
Again, you’ll find this one in many similar sports like skating.
Tail
Every part of the board has its own name, usually, and they went with something simple for the back end of the board—the tail.
Turtle roll
This one is quite specific.
A turtle roll is a technique used for getting the board through a breaking wave.
The surfer hangs on to the rails and turns over, being fully submerged in the water.
Kook
Kook is yet another term for an inexperienced, rookie surfer.
It can also be used, perhaps unfairly, to describe someone who isn’t very good at surfing.
Everyone learns at their own pace!
Hang ten
Hang ten means to place both your feet on the nose of your board, with your toes just over the tip.
This is a very difficult way to surf as you can imagine.
Hang loose
This is an interesting one, steeped in the history of surfing.
The shaka sign, extending the thumb and little finger and shaking it, is heavily associated with surfing, and originates in Hawaii.
Hang loose is another name for that sign!
It really just is a salutation, meaning hello and goodbye.
Hodad
Finally, a term for the non-surfers—hodads.
Anyone who hangs around on the beach and doesn’t surf, whether or not they intended to in the first place, is a hodad.
While the list could go on longer than I’m sure most of you are willing to read, hopefully the explanations we’ve given here have shed some light on surfing slang.
As with any kind of slang or specialist terminology, it can seem really daunting at first.
But if you hang out in the right crowd, you’ll pick up all the most important bits of slang really quickly.
There’s a lot of peripheral slang that really isn’t all that important except to the purists!
