Sports fan or not, if you watched any of the 2026 Winter Olympic games, you won’t fail to have had your breath taken away by the feats of skill and endurance achieved by the 3000+ athletes aiming to go Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together. You may also have been bewildered by the creative and bizarre terms used in each of the event’s sixteen disciplines. From your alley-oop to your Axel, your mogul to your monobob, winter sports have drawn on the Scandinavian, Alpine, Dutch, and English languages to create a lingo of their very own. Here’s just a few of the weird and wonderful words from the world of winter sport and what they mean:

Alpine

Originally relating to the Alps, it now refers to anything characteristic of high mountains.

Alley-oop

Taking its origins from the circus, where French acrobats, would say ‘allez hop’ as an encouragement to ‘get going’, the Alley-oop is a variation of a trick in which the snowboarder or skier spins in the opposite direction to the momentum of travel on a half-pipe.

Axel

Named after its Norwegian inventor, Axel Paulsen (1855-1938), the Axel is the only jump in figure skating in which the skater takes off facing forwards and lands backwards, therefore always adding an extra half spin.

Bobsled / Bobsleigh

Bob – the back-and-forth movement used to increase speed at the start – plus sled/sleigh – a Middle Dutch word for a vehicle used to move goods across ice or snow.

Cork

An off-axis spin in freestyle snowboarding and skiing, like the motion of a corkscrew (cork 540, double cork, triple cork…).I tried one once. I’m glad I was wearing a helmet.

“Kiss and cry”

The designated area next to an ice rink where figure skaters wait for their scores. Coined by Finnish judge Jane Erkko, the idea is to capture the reactions and raw emotions of competitors as the scores come in.

Luge

The fastest sport in the Winter Games, the luge dates back to 1905 and originates in Switzerland. It literally means a ‘small coasting sled’ and is not to be confused with the Skeleton, where sliders race head first on what’s essentially a tea tray.

Mogul

Derived from the Bavarian word mugel, meaning ‘mound’, mogul skiers descend rapidly down a slope covered in moguls, scoring points for technical precision in the turns, speed and two arial elements.

Monobob

Debuting at the Beijing Olympics in 2022, the monobob is the single-driver version of the bobsleigh event.

Nordic skiing

Nordic skiing has its origins in Scandinavia, where 5000 years ago people used boards to travel across snow. The Finnish began using poles in around 1500 and this mode of transport gradually evolved into a recreational activity. The main different between Nordic and downhills skiing is the free-heel binding that allows you to lift your ankle.

Ollie

A skateboarding trick – and by extension snowboarding – invented by Alan ‘Ollie’ Gelfand in where the boarder performs a jump without the aid of a ramp.

Lutz

Second only to the Axel in terms of fame and one of the most difficult manoeuvres in figure skating, the Lutz takes its name from the Austrian skater, Alois Lutz. The International Skating Union defines it as a “toe-pick assisted jump with an entrance from a back outside edge and landing on the back outside edge of the opposite foot.” Whatever that means.

Piste

The French word for trail or track, and likely taken from the obsolete Italian verb pistare (to trample down), a piste is a marked slope or beaten track used for skiing and snowboarding.

Slalom

From the Norwegian Sla (steep hillside) and låm (trail), this term originating in Telemark, Norway, described the technique for winding down paths.

Ski

A Norwegian word meaning ‘stick of wood’!

Whether or not throwing yourself down a mountain on sticks of wood is your thing, we all appreciate the dedication it takes to work on something day in day out, aiming for excellence in your field. In the same way, our linguists work with words, day in day out, to help our clients achieve excellence in their respective fields.

Written by

David Howard