Fighting game Verbiage
What is an Anti air
Hitting someone who is jumping at you while you are on the ground. Because you can't block in the air in most fighting games, a smart opponent will swat you out of the air if you jump at them too predictably. Each character usually has a few moves that hit at an upward angle, perfect for intercepting those pesky jumpers; perhaps the most powerful such move is the dragon punch. People who jump at you too much are giving you free damage, so you'd better learn to take it.
What is Armor
A state where a character can absorb a hit without entering hit stun, which lets them continue to attack or move. Armor isn't quite as good as being invincible; usually, armor can be thrown, and often a game will also have a set of moves that can break armor directly. And depending on how many hits of armor you have, sometimes super fast multi-hitting moves can get through too. But armor is usually still a powerful property, since for most attacks, it will plow through without trouble.
It's often called "super armor" or, if you can take unlimited hits without flinching, "hyper armor". Tekken calls a move with armor a "power crush".
The act of pressing a ton of buttons rapidly without any thought. Lots of beginners will randomly mash, because they don't know what attacks they should be using. Try not to do this if you can! Even if you're confused, it's better to try and find one or two useful attacks and use those. That said, mashing is a mechanic in some fighting games. You can usually mash buttons to reduce the amount of time you are stunned, and in some Versus games, mashing will increase the damage done by certain super attacks.
What is hit stun?
The period of time when your character cannot perform any action after getting hit by an attack. Instead, you have to wait for your character to stop reeling from the hit and recover before you can take new actions. If the offensive player manages to land another hit before their opponent leaves hit stun, then that's how combos get formed! It's rare and super game-specific, but sometimes you can take actions during hit stun. Examples include combo breaking in Killer Instinct and bursting in Guilty Gear — it usually takes the form of some sort of risky combo escape. If you're not playing a game like this, then you just gotta sit there and hold the damage.
What is a instant overhead?
Hitting someone with a jumping attack the instant you leave the ground. In most games, this will be an overhead (like all jumping attacks are), and because it happens more or less instantly, they are very hard to block, especially if this character does not normally have a grounded overhead. However, these attacks are usually low damage and quite unsafe, since you'll be flying in the air helplessly after your attack. Try to use them to finish off a round if you can.
An input technique for performing a special move (but usually a dragon punch) in the opposite direction immediately as your opponent jumps over your head. The idea is to input the entire special move's input in the normal direction, juuuust before the opponent switches sides with the jump, but then wait a split second until the opponent clears your head to press the attack button. In games with generous input buffers, the game will register your special move successfully, but "automatically correct" you to face the new direction before doing it.
describe Damage scaling
A system that reduces the damage for each hit in a combo more and more as the combo gets longer. So for example, maybe the first two moves of your combo do 100% of their regular damage value, but then the third move does 80%, the fourth 70%, and so on down to some minimum, like 10%.
describe the term Meaty
The most common definition of meaty is an attack that hits an opponent on the very first frame possible after they rise from a knockdown (or other similar situations, like being flipped out). This guarantees the opponent must either block the attack, or immediately do an invincible move (like a dragon punch). If they just press any random button, they will get counter hit because their attack still has to go through its non-hitting startup, but your attack is already active on top of them. Learning how to time a meaty is extremely important to fighting game strategy, and you can often just beat beginners by meatying them over and over as they insist on attacking at all times.
The other definition of meaty is an attack that makes contact with the opponent not on its first active frame like normal, but on a later active frame instead. This will generate the same hit stun or block stun, but you'll recover sooner and you'll generate more frame advantage, and possibly unlock some new combos. These two definitions often go hand in hand! When you attack someone as they rise from a knockdown, sometimes your attack won't hit on the first active frame, but rather some later frame. That would be a meaty that hits meaty. A little confusing, for sure, but just wait until you try to understand what a fuzzy is.
A style of move named after a prominent wrestling technique, often given to grapplers. There are two types of lariats in fighting games. The first is when your opponent spins in circles with both arms extended, often seen with Zangief (Street Fighter) and Haggar (Marvel vs. Capcom 3). These moves are often projectile invincible at the very least, and in some cases, even fully invincible, but your character is mostly planted in place while spinning.
The second type of lariat is a move that causes a character to run forward, one arm extended, ready to give a clothesline when they reach their opponent. These forward-advancing moves are often strong combo finishers or may even be a scary approach tool, depending on the game. You'll see examples of this with Hugo (Street Fighter), Bardock (Dragon Ball FighterZ), and Ladiva (Granblue Fantasy Versus).
A term used to describe an opponent who has no visible health remaining on their health bar, but are somehow still alive and fighting. It's normally only a big deal if someone is making a huge, unlikely comeback with no life remaining. Especially in games with chip damage, these usually end up being pretty exciting.
A technique where you try to change your block very precisely in order to cover multiple directions (like high/low, or left/right). One of a few possible definitions of the term fuzzy.
Let's take a theoretical example; suppose there's a character with a special move that has a high and low option at the end. If we check out the frame data, we find that the low attack starts in 20 frames, and the high attack starts in 23 frames. Rather than try to pull off some unlikely reaction to the high/low part, you instead block low for 20 frames, then switch to a high block between frames 21 and 23.
What is Gravity scaling
A game mechanic where the opponent in a prolonged air combo or being juggled will start to fall towards the ground faster as the combo gets longer. Eventually, the character gets too heavy and will thunk to the ground faster than the opponent can attack, ending the combo. It's not a super common system, usually implemented in NRS titles or the occasional anime game, but it's one way to prevent infinite combos.
What is a empty jump?
The act of jumping without doing any air attack. There are lots of cool strategic reasons why you might want to do this. For example, if you're a slow moving character with beefy air attacks, you can close the gap by empty jumping. Your opponent might think you want to press one of those wonderful long-range air attacks and try to anti-air you, but since you didn't press anything, they'll swing and miss. This is called a grappler jump.
Since jumping attacks are overheads, another option is empty jumping and then doing an immediate, fast low attack instead as a mixup. We call this "empty jump low" and you can also try doing similar ideas like empty jump throw if you want (Smash players call this a tomahawk). I know that everytime you jump you want to attack, but sometimes less is more.
Any move that causes a super prolonged state of hit stun, usually with the opponent staggering over their feet while you get free rein to do whatever you want. It's a common word in Killer Instinct as there is a specific state called "stagger" that allows for opponents to be hit or thrown freely, but it can be used in any game where giant hits occur.
Stagger can also be used in its more common English meaning to describe attacks that are slightly delayed or off-beat from each other. Basically, you leave gaps between your attacks in tricky and unpredictable ways so your opponent thinks they're free to attack, then you smoke them with a devastating counter hit. You might hear something like "he staggered that heavy punch" or "nice stagger pressure" to indicate this.
What is a Restand?
Bringing your opponent from an airborne state down to a grounded state, usually during a combo. Some restands will let you continue the combo, but even if they don't, restands will usually grant you some serious frame advantage so you can go for a mixup. For this reason, sometimes they are called "standing resets". Killer Instinct brands these as recaptures.
What is a Umeshoryu
A psychic shoryuken done at an unexpected time that hits your opponent, made famous by fighting game legend Daigo Umehara. You gotta make sure the shoryu is done pretty much out of nowhere, like while you are applying pressure or while you are jockeying for position during footsies, and it can't be a reaction to something; it has to be done purely on anticipation. Oh, and it has to actually hit. It's not an umeshoryu if it doesn't work.
To be honest, you can apply this "ume" prefix to pretty much anything if it comes out of nowhere and looks like a genius move. If nobody has thrown a fireball for 30 seconds, but you somehow just magically jump the instant one is thrown, you might call that an "umejump".
What is an American Reset?
When somebody accidentally drops their combo, but a follow-up attack hits the opponent anyway because they simply weren't blocking or, indeed, paying attention to the screen at all. It's kind of like a reset, but with no underlying mixup behind it, which means it should "never" work... except for the times it does.
What is a Tiger Knee?
A method to perform a special move in the air as fast as possible after you leave the ground. Almost always abbreviated to TK, and sometimes called an Instant Air Special (IAS). If you wanted to do an instant quarter circle forward air move, for example, you would instead do the quarter circle while on the ground, and then continue to roll your joystick to up-forward to jump. Then, you can simply just press your attack button and the game should save your quarter circle input long enough to have it count as the air move. Using numpad notation, this would be 2369, or 2147 for quarter circle back moves.
In essence, rather than jumping and then inputting your special move, you input the special move first, and then jump. The technique is named after the input for Sagat's Tiger Knee Crush, which was 2369 in Street Fighter II (even though it has been changed to a DP motion in modern games, which makes this term's meaning even more difficult to figure out).
What is a Kara Throw?
A specific type of kara cancel where the second move is a throw. In games where kara throws are possible, you'll pick a normal attack that moves your character forward a little bit during the first few frames, and then you immediately input the throw; it will feel like you're pressing the attack and the throw buttons almost simultaneously. Your character will then lurch forward suddenly and throw, greatly increasing its range.
In fact, you'll often be able to throw from way outside the opponent's throw range which, as you might guess, makes defending against throws very hard. The running joke is that Chun-Li in SFIII: 3rd Strike, a character with a super powerful kara throw, is the game's best grappler, but it certainly won't feel like much of a joke when you're playing.
What is a Kara Cancel
The ability to very quickly cancel a move into another move, before the first move completes its startup. Normally, in order to cancel a move, you'll have to make contact with your opponent, but kara cancels bypass that restriction and cancel immediately, often before you even see the first move on screen at all. The reason you want to do this is added range; the first move is chosen specifically because it will move your character forward during its first few frames. Then, if you quickly transition to the second move, it will be executed from this new position.
Not every game allows kara cancels, but when it does happen, it's usually the result of the game engine allowing sloppy inputs. They intentionally permit moves to cancel into other moves within the first few frames so players do not have to be incredibly precise in case they fat-finger some buttons. Depending on the game, this can have wild effects, including famous bugs like roll canceling. The most common use of kara canceling is the kara throw, but often times you can kara cancel special moves or supers as well. A related term is the whiff cancel.
What is a Chicken block?
Holding up-back while you are being attacked so that you jump as soon as there is any gap in your opponent's sequence. This works only in games that let you block in the air, like most team games, so holding up-back lets you jump and keep blocking.
In essence, you are "chickening out" of trying to guess whether to block high or low, so you try to get into the air (where attacks are all blocked the same way) to escape your opponent's scary close-range pressure instead. You can typically defeat chicken blocking by going low and catching their feet as they try to jump, but that's easier said than done in the heat of a match.
What is a Chicago Punish?
Correctly blocking a very unsafe move from your opponent (like a dragon punch) and then punishing it with a low damage, sub-optimal offensive move (like a throw). Normally, this should be a huge swing of momentum in a match and you should retaliate with huge damage. However, because you panicked or weren't ready, you just reflexed into some weak "default" option that makes you look a bit silly. This term was popularized in the Midwest as a self-deprecating joke, but feel free to replace Chicago with your own hometown, since if we're honest, we're all equally bad.
A super that requires multiple inputs to keep going after the super has connected. These are pretty rare, but notable characters that have supers like this are Geese Howard (whose super "Deadly Rave" is where the name comes from), Hibiki from The Last Blade, Dee Jay from Street Fighter 6, and Djeeta from the original Granblue Fantasy Versus (in GBFV: Rising, her super will fully complete without any extra player input required). Think of them as the manual transmissions of super attacks. They require a little bit of extra work to drive, but some people simply find them fun to input, while others always release the clutch too early and stall out.
A win that was almost a Perfect, but you only took chip damage. Your friend didn't "really" hit you, did they?
what is a Izuna Drop?
A style of move in a fighting game where you grab your opponent out of the air, flip upside down, and then body slam them to the ground head first. It's a common move given to ninja-like archetypes, like Street Fighter's Vega, Guy, or Kimberly. It's a stylish, fan favorite move that boosts a character's cool factor by quite a bit, especially if you get to use it often in combos.