Drinking Game Glossary
Every table has its own language. Here are 36 terms you'll hear at any party - what they mean, and which games they come from.
All 36 terms, A to Z
Anchor
The last player in a team relay lineup, and usually the one with the strongest chugging or flipping resume. In Flip Cup and Boat Race, the anchor can't start until every teammate ahead has finished, so they inherit whatever lead - or disaster - the team built. Good anchors stay calm, drink clean, and finish under pressure. Example: down half a cup in a Flip Cup race, a great anchor can still steal the win with one perfect flip.
Boot (Das Boot)
A boot-shaped glass beer vessel, usually holding two liters, made famous in America by the movie Beerfest. The boot is passed around a group and each person drinks; whoever takes the second-to-last pull traditionally buys the next one. The trap is physics - when air rushes into the toe, beer surges at your face. Veterans point the toe sideways to avoid the splash. It makes a spectacular grand-finale event at any Beer Olympics.
Bounce Shot
A Beer Pong throw that bounces on the table before landing in a cup. The reward is usually two cups instead of one; the risk is that defenders are allowed to swat or catch any ball that bounces. It's a rhythm play - toss it when your opponents are distracted, celebrating, or mid-sip. Bouncing is also the entire engine of Rage Cage and Slap Cup, where every shot must bounce into the cup in front of you.
Buffalo
A lifetime rule: once you join Buffalo Club, you may only ever hold your drink in your non-dominant hand. If anyone catches you holding it in the wrong hand and yells 'Buffalo!', you must finish that drink. There's no opting out mid-membership - the rule follows you to weddings, work happy hours, and brunches for the rest of your days. It's the sleeper cell of drinking games: dormant for months, then suddenly, catastrophically active.
Categories (rule)
A classic rule card in Kings Cup and Circle of Death, and a full standalone game in its own right. The card-drawer names a category - cereal brands, NBA teams, things in a kitchen - and play goes around the circle with each player naming a new item. Hesitate, repeat an answer, or blank completely and you drink. Pro move: pick a category you've secretly pre-loaded three answers for, because it always comes back around to you.
Cheers to the Governor
A counting game where the group counts aloud from 1 to 21; whoever says 21 shouts 'Cheers to the Governor!', everyone drinks, and that player invents a new rule that replaces one number (for example, 7 becomes a duck quack). Each completed round adds another substitution, so the count becomes a minefield of noises, gestures, and reversals. Mess up the sequence and you drink and restart. By round five, nobody remembers what 12 is anymore.
Chug
To drink continuously without pausing until the cup, can, or bottle is empty - the fundamental verb of drinking games. Chugs are the penalty in 7-11-Doubles, the entire sport in Boat Race and Flip Cup, and the pre-swing requirement in Dizzy Bat. Technique matters: tilt steadily, open your throat, and don't 'glug' in bursts. Chug responsibly - it hits fast, so know your limits and never let a table pressure you past them.
Death Cup
In Beer Pong, any cup that has been hit but not yet fully finished and set down empty. Under Death Cup house rules, if the other team sinks a ball into that still-in-hand or abandoned cup, the game instantly ends and the guilty team loses on the spot. It exists to punish slow drinkers and cup hoarders, and it's why veterans finish pulled cups immediately. Always announce whether Death Cup is live before the first throw.
Elbow Rule
The most argued-about rule in Beer Pong: when shooting, your elbow (some houses say wrist) must stay behind the edge of the table. Leaning over the cups for a shorter shot is cheating, and violations mean the shot doesn't count or must be redone. Every party has one player who swears the rule doesn't exist - settle it before the game starts. Beer Die players enforce a similar plane: throws must launch from behind your end of the table.
Farkle
In the dice game of the same name, a Farkle is the disaster roll: you throw your dice and score absolutely nothing, losing every point you'd banked that turn. It's the sound of greed being punished - you had 800 points, you rolled 'just one more time', and now you have zero and a drink to take. The word doubles as noun and verb ('I farkled') and as a warning to push-your-luck players everywhere.
Flip
The signature move of Flip Cup: after emptying your cup, you set it mouth-up on the table edge, hanging slightly over, then flick the base with one or two fingers so it flips and lands upside down. Only then can your next teammate start. The physics reward gentle touches - hard flips spin wildly. Great flippers land it in one or two tries; nervous ones send cups skittering across the table while their whole team screams.
Goon
Australian slang for cheap boxed wine, or more precisely the silver bag ('goon sack') inside the box. Goon is the fuel of Goon of Fortune, where the bag is pegged to a rotating clothesline and spun like a game-show wheel - whoever it stops above drinks from the nozzle. The empty bag traditionally becomes a pillow, which tells you everything about its cultural status. Approach with respect: goon is stronger than its price tag suggests.
Heaven
A Kings Cup and Circle of Death rule, usually tied to the 7 ('7 is heaven'). The moment the card is revealed, the drawer silently points a finger to the sky - and everyone else must do the same. The last player to reach for heaven drinks. The cruelty is in the timing: good players wait, chat casually, and strike minutes later mid-conversation. Expect at least one person to be dramatically betrayed by their own reflexes.
House Rules
The local amendments a household or friend group layers onto a game's standard rules - and defends like constitutional law. Which Beer Pong re-racks are allowed, whether bounce shots count double, what the ace means in Kings Cup: all house rules. The golden protocol is simple: the host's rules apply, and all rules get announced before the game starts, not invoked mid-argument. 'That's a house rule' is both an explanation and a peace treaty.
Island
A Beer Pong call available when one of your opponents' cups stands isolated, no longer touching any other cup. Before shooting, you announce 'Island!' and name that lone cup. Sink it and the reward is usually two cups (the island plus one of their choice); hit any other cup instead and the ball doesn't count at all. Each player typically gets one island call per game, so save it for when your aim feels honest.
Kings Cup
The large cup sitting in the center of the table during Kings Cup - and the reason the game bears its name. Each time one of the first three kings is drawn, that player pours some of their own drink into the center cup, creating an escalating mystery cocktail of beer, seltzer, wine, and regret. Whoever draws the fourth and final king must drink the entire thing. Circle of Death uses a similar center-cup mechanic.
Little Green Man
A beloved Kings Cup rule: an imaginary tiny green man sits on the rim of your drink. Before every single sip, you must pluck him off and set him aside; after drinking, you place him back on the rim. Forget the pantomime even once and you drink again - correctly, this time. It sounds idiotic because it is, and that's the point: watching adults carefully relocate an invisible man all night never stops being funny.
Mate
A Kings Cup and Circle of Death rule, usually attached to the 8 ('8 is mate'). The drawer picks another player as their mate; from then on, whenever one of them drinks, the other must drink too, until the rule expires or a new mate card overwrites it. Chains can form when mates pick mates, dragging half the table into every sip. Choosing the game's most-targeted player as your mate is a classic self-own.
Nominate
To assign your earned drinks to another player instead of taking them yourself - the currency of games like Ride the Bus and Higher or Lower, where correct guesses let you 'give out' sips. Nominating is pure politics: reward allies, punish rivals, or split drinks to spread chaos. Many houses allow stacking, so three players can nominate the same victim at once. Choose targets wisely; drinking games have long memories and the deck always turns.
Pacing (Spacer)
The art of drinking slower than the game wants you to - and the single most important 'rule' on this site. A spacer is a glass of water or soda taken between alcoholic drinks to stretch the night out. Smart pacing means eating beforehand, alternating with water, subbing sips for full drinks, and tapping out without shame. Marathon formats like Power Hour and Centurion are exactly where spacers save the night. Hydrated players win mornings.
Par
In Pub Golf, the number of sips you're allowed to finish your drink at a given bar - each pub on the crawl is a 'hole' with its own par. Finish a par-3 pint in three sips and you're even; need six and you're three over. Lowest total score after nine holes wins. Pars let organizers tune difficulty per venue, and a wise scorekeeper sets generous pars late in the round when everyone's short game deteriorates.
Power Hour
The famous endurance format: one shot of beer (roughly 1.5 ounces) every minute, for sixty minutes, traditionally soundtracked by a playlist that changes songs each minute as the timer. It sounds dainty and absolutely is not - sixty beer shots add up to about four beers in one hour. Finishing all sixty makes you a Power Hour champion; the extended 100-minute version is called Centurion. Eat first, keep water nearby, and respect the format.
Pregame
The gathering before the actual event - drinks at someone's place before the bar, concert, or party. As a verb, 'to pregame' is to warm up socially and economically (home drinks cost less). Pregames are the natural habitat of zero-equipment games like Never Have I Ever and Most Likely To, which need nothing but a couch and a countdown. The classic pregame mistake is peaking too early; the goal is arriving fun, not arriving finished.
Question Master
A Kings Cup title, usually granted by the queen card. While you hold it, anyone who answers any question you ask must drink - the only safe responses are silence, a question back, or the house's agreed safeword. The Question Master's weapon is normalcy: 'Hey, what time is it?' twenty minutes after everyone forgot the rule. The title passes when a new queen is drawn. The standalone game Questions runs on the same trap.
Rebuttal (Redemption)
Beer Pong's mercy rule: when the other team sinks your final cup, you aren't dead yet - each remaining shooter gets a last shot ('rebuttal' or 'redemption'). Hit it and the game continues, often into sudden-death overtime with three cups per side. Many houses play 'shoot until you miss' on the rebuttal, allowing legendary full-rack comebacks. Whether redemption exists, and which version applies, is a top-three cause of Beer Pong arguments - settle it pregame.
Re-rack
In Beer Pong, a request to reshape the remaining cups into a tighter formation - typically allowed twice per team per game, and only at the start of your turn. Standard racks include the triangle (6 or 3 cups), diamond (4), and the beloved 'gentleman's rack.' A good re-rack turns scattered stragglers back into a target. House rules govern everything: how many re-racks you get, what shapes are legal, and whether the last cup gets auto-centered.
Rule Card
The wildcard that makes rule-based games infinite: a card (usually the jack in Kings Cup or Circle of Death, or a marked block in Drunk Jenga) that lets the drawer invent any rule the table must obey - no swearing, drink with your left hand, speak in an accent, add a word to every sentence. Breaking a standing rule costs a drink. Rules stack as the game goes on, until simply existing correctly becomes a challenge.
Shotgun
A speed-drinking method: puncture a hole near the bottom of a beer can, put your mouth over the hole, tilt the can up, then crack the tab - air rushes in the top and the beer empties in seconds. Shotguns appear as race events at Beer Olympics and as celebratory punctuation everywhere else. Technique notes: use a key or church-key, smooth the hole's edges, and commit fully. A hesitant shotgun is a wet shirt.
Sink
To land a ball, coin, or object into a cup - the universal scoring verb of Beer Pong, Quarters, and Rage Cage ('she sank three cups straight'). In the Korean game Titanic it flips meaning: a shot glass floats in a glass of beer while players take turns pouring soju into it, and whoever's pour finally sinks the glass drinks the whole boilermaker. Either way, when something sinks, somebody drinks.
Snake Eyes
The dice roll of two ones - the lowest possible result with two dice, named for the two tiny pips staring up like a snake's eyes. In the drinking game Snake Eyes, rolling it makes the whole table drink; in Three Man and other dice games it usually triggers special penalties or crowns a new victim. Statistically it's a 1-in-36 roll, which is exactly rare enough to feel personal every time it happens to you.
Somaek
Korea's essential boilermaker: soju plus maekju (beer), typically a shot of soju dropped or poured into a glass of cold lager. The name mashes the two words together, and the ideal ratio is debated as seriously as any sports rivalry - 3:7 is the diplomatic answer. Somaek is the drink at the center of Korean table games like Titanic, where pouring the soju without sinking the floating shot glass is the whole sport.
Three Man
Both the dice game and the cursed title within it. Players roll to see who becomes the Three Man - often marked with a silly hat - and from then on, that player drinks every single time a 3 appears on the dice, whether rolled directly or as part of a total. The curse lifts only when someone else rolls a 3-related trigger and inherits the crown. Few titles in drinking games are handed over with more joy.
Thumb Master
A Kings Cup power position, usually granted by the jack or a house-chosen card. At any moment, the Thumb Master may quietly place a thumb on the table's edge - and everyone else must follow. The last player to notice and plant their thumb drinks. The role rewards theater: wait until a heated debate or a dramatic story, then strike. The title lasts until the next Thumb Master card is drawn. Paranoia is the real game.
Waterfall
The most famous rule in card drinking games, traditionally triggered by the ace in Kings Cup and Circle of Death. Everyone starts drinking at the same moment, but you may only stop once the player before you in the circle stops. The card-drawer starts and stops at will, meaning the last person downstream can be drinking for a very long time. Sit next to a merciful friend, because a vindictive waterfall-starter is a night-defining event.
Wizard Staff
The party's most visible achievement system: every time you finish a can, you tape it on top of your previous empty, building a growing 'staff' that you must carry all night. Titles scale with height - a few cans makes you an apprentice, and a staff taller than you makes you a true wizard, sometimes crowned with a decorated final can. It's self-pacing by design (the staff gets unwieldy), hilarious in photos, and mighty in legend.
Social
The friendliest call in drinking games: someone shouts 'Social!', everyone raises their glass, clinks or cheers, and everyone drinks together - no winners, no losers, no targets. In Kings Cup and Circle of Death it's a common house assignment for one of the cards, and in casual play it's the reset button when the table's energy dips or an argument needs defusing. If you're ever unsure what a drawn card means, calling a social is rarely the wrong answer.