The Bicycle Dictionary
8 minute read
"Slide these words into your everyday vernacular, to try and gain traction with the kewl kids." - The Kewl Kids
| Bearing | Not the "stay on this bearing to find the treasure" kind. Generally anything in your bike that spins or rotates will have a bearing, most commonly a sealed ball bearing. These come in many different shapes and sizes and can be replaced when they're clapped out. If you don't know what these are, they probably need changing. |
| Berm | A banked corner. The opposite of a flat corner. |
| Bib | A chamois (sha-mē) with shoulder straps and often lots of snack pockets. Also referred to as a wrestling suit. |
| Bidon | What roadies refer to as a bottle. |
| Boost | To go higher than expected on a jump. "Dude, you boosted that!". Or a wheel standard and chainline. |
| Bottom Out | Not just using all your suspension, but abruptly hitting the end of your travel. Also referred to as "blowing both o-rings off", referencing the o-rings that mark your travel usage. |
| Bullet | Running a lid without a visor or peak. Also what you might be begging for half way around a sufferfest. |
| Bunny Hop | Lifting the bike off the ground while riding, with little to no assistance from a tranny. |
| Cable | Not a hose. |
| Case | To come up short on a landing. Could be taken from Motocross referring to landing on the engine case, but I'm not sure and I can't be bothered to look it up. |
| Catch Berm | A life saving trail feature usually at the bottom of some kind of stunt, and before some kind of cliff. |
| Chamois | A pad sewn into your underwear to make hours in the saddle more bearable. This is totally acceptable, however a soft saddle is not. |
| Chicken Line | An easier option on a trail to avoid putting your life in your own hands. |
| Clean | Something you don't do enough to your bike. Or making it through a tricky section without dabbing. |
| Clipless | Actually means what most people now call "clips". Clipless pedals were a sequel to toe clips and therefore clip-less. Most people just call them clips because it's easier and who uses toe clips any more? |
| Clipped | Clipped in refers to pedals, however clipped most often refers to catching a bar or pedal on a tree or rock most often causing an "inchident". |
| Compression | A dial on your suspension that you arbitrarily twist when your bike doesn't feel quite right. Or a quick change in gradient at the bottom of a steep feature. |
| Dab | Putting a foot down through a technical section, up or down. Jury is still out on hand dabs. |
| Down The Guts | Go and ride Reverse Brazilian and it'll all make sense. |
| E-Bike | An electric bike containing a person you now own moral high ground over despite driving long distances to trail heads, shuttling, and using lift access. |
| Enduro | Initially a race format where the climb stages are not timed, however still a great deal of pedalling was involved. Now it is a word you can use to describe whatever you want. "Bro went full enduro". |
| Flats | Either a puncture or flat pedals. One is good, the other not. |
| Goggs | Goggles. |
| Granny | The smaller sprocket on your chainset (front chainrings). Since everyone runs 1x setups these days, granny can also be used for your smallest gear. "I was so flogged on that last climb, I was in granny the whole way". |
| Grind | What you need to do to install your seatclamp because you ordered the wrong size and you're too embarrassed/lazy to take it back. Also what you do 9-5 in order to pay for said shiny anodized parts. Or possibly how you might describe the long fire road climb portion of a sufferfest. |
| Hammer | To go hard. One may also "drop the hammer". |
| Hardtail | A bike with no rear suspension, often flying by you leaving you questioning your cycling abilities. |
| Hero Dirt | Conditions after rain. But not too much rain. And not too soon after rain, or too long. |
| Hose | A line used to carry hydraulic fluid to your brakes, or water to your filthy rig. |
| Invert | Either a backflip (good), a table so tweaked it's passed 90° (very good), or your bike upside down on the ground so you can work on it (very very bad). |
| Left Hand Thread | The reason you can't get your left pedal off. |
| Lid | Helmet. |
| Linkage | The rear parts of a full suspension bike frame used to transfer force from the back wheel into the shock. These come is all different shapes and sizes. |
| Lip | The top part of a jump. If a jump is said to be "lippy" this means steep. However a steep climb is not lippy. |
| Mechanical | Mechanical issue eg, bent derailleur, flat tyre, or snapped bike. |
| Mech | A derailleur. |
| Mosey On | To take your sweet time. |
| Moto | Rear brake on the left, front brake on the right. Also called British Brakes. The cause of many arguments (and crashes). |
| Mullet | Specifically 29" wheel in the front, 27.5" in the back. People are often confused by this as Mullet's are short in the front, long in the back, but the actual meaning is derived from "business in the front, party in the rear". |
| N+1 | The number of bikes you need. "N" refers to the number of bikes you currently own. |
| North Shore | A riding zone in Vancouver BC. Or if you're from the UK, any piece of wood on a trail. |
| Pain Cave | Where your bike sits in the winter, right next to, but not actually attached to a turbo trainer or rollers. |
| Pedal Catcher | A marketing device installed on a trail in order to sell you 155mm cranks. |
| Pedalling Squares | Stamping on the pedals and not getting a smooth power stroke. The opposite of pedalling circles. |
| Power Meter | A device used to tell you if you are tired or not. |
| Punchy | A short but hard and/or steep climb. |
| Punny | Puncture or flat. The absolute worst mechanical you can have. |
| Q-Factor | For all intents and purposes, this is how wide apart your pedals are. |
| Roll | What you should probably have done on that jump rather than sent it blindly to your doom. |
| Roost | Short for "Rooster Tail". |
| Scrub | Opposite of boost, keeping it low over a jump. Became fashionable because low is fast, fast is cool. |
| Secret Loamers | Trails that were (most likely) built illegally, and scratched in with a rake. Most often not built very sustainably so make sure to tell everyone about them so they get blown out. Probably the most fun trails to ride. |
| Session | A downhill bike manufactured by Trek, the foundation of the favourite "looks like a Session" PinkBike comment . Also a period of time riding the same section of trail or feature. "Good sesh on those jumps mayte!". |
| Shralp | Specifically hitting a corner so hard that your back wheel skips out and fires up some delicious dirt (without touching the brake). Can also more generally mean shredding hard. |
| Shuttle | What Bezos uses to get a better view on his empire, or what you use because you had too many Snakebite's the night before and you can't be arsed to pedal up. |
| Seized | What happens when you don't own any grease and leave your commuter out in the rain all winter. |
| Skid | The kind of folk with a BMX background. |
| Slab | |
| Slick | Slippery. "It's wetter than an otter's pocket, watch out, those roots will be slick". |
| Snakebite | Not as common now as most people run tubeless, but also referred to as a pinch flat where (usually) the tube gets pinched between the rim and a rock causing two slits that look like a snake bite! Also: half larger, half cider with a dash of blackcurrant. |
| Sniper | A small area which you must hit to avoid death. Can refer to a lip, landing, tranny, ledge or other stuff. |
| Spin | Generally referring to spinning your legs faster in an easier gear to rely more on your cardiovascular system, rather than your muscular system. |
| Strava | A device used to show everyone where the secret loamers are, and label enormous efforts as "Recovery Ride" to subconsciously flex on your riding buddies. |
| Sufferfest | When someone tells you it's going to be a 1 sandwich ride, but it turns out to be 3, and even if there were places to fill up with water on the way (which there aren't), you would not be stopping anyway. |
| Table | A jump with no death gap to clear (not to say you can't still die), or a trick in which the bike is laid flat in the air. "Your table over that table was as flat as a pancake!". |
| Tacky | Used to describe the grip levels of hero dirt. Previously prepended by "Super" to announce to the world your tyres would last for approximately one lap. |
| Taco | Not the popular truck model manufactured by Toyota, but what your wheel looks like when you case a 50ft step down. |
| Tech | In the context of trails, usually means rough with rocks and roots. Can apply to climbs or descents. |
| The Bike Industry | A demonised group of fat cats, continuously scheming to find the next way to separate the idiot mountain biking community (you) from more of their hard earned cash. |
| The Dumpsters | A high end hang out spot in Vancouver BC, where you can drink in public and be invisible to law enforcement. |
| Tire | Quite clearly: to become tired. ie. I'm tired of people trying to tell me how to spell tyre. |
| Toonie | An XC race of sorts in Whistler BC that happens most Thursdays. Also referred to as a "Loonie" by people who want you to know they have lived there longer than you. |
| Torque Specs | Random numbers manufacturers place adjacent to bolts to help you gauge how much you should lean on your allen key because you don't own a torque wrench and there's no way you're going to go to a shop to get your stem tightened. |
| Tranny | In this case referring to a transition, usually in a landing, but also can be used in take-offs. If a landing were flat it would be said to have no tranny. If you managed to "catch that sniper tranny", then you successfully achieved landing on a very small patch of desirable ground and your friends will be very impressed. |
| True | Not the Spandau Ballet kind, more the kind that describes if you have taco's or wheels. |
| Tweak | Either a procedure performed on your brakes to stop them rubbing, or a 10° bar turn while airborne. |
| Tyre | As in two-tyred, like a bicycle. |
