**** ***** (*********)

Prof. *****
ENG385H1 F
November 17, 2013
Linguisticmanias: On the Slang and Jargon of the English-Speaking Stepmania Community
The specialized language that is utilized and shared amongst any given community holds the
potential to make statements about its members and provide both insiders and outsiders alike with a
glimpse into the inner-workings of its private sphere. The personal, the political, the social, and the
historical forces that act upon specific groups are each manifested and reflected in the community's
lexicon. With a focus on the English-speaking 4key Stepmania community in specific, it is the aim of
this paper to analyze how and why the slang and jargon that is in active use within this particular
collective may have arisen and become popularized, as well as the consequences that this shared
vocabulary has in perpetuating the community's image. We begin with an investigation of the varying
origins of the community's lexicon, highlighting general trends in the etymologies of loanwords that get
chosen to become articles of jargon and/or slang while also analyzing the methodology behind the
creation of new words. Slang formation and popularization, especially when its source is preexisting
articles of jargon, will be of particular interest as well. We will then examine other fields namely the
musical or artistic, the technological or scientific, and the military realms whose own articles of slang
and jargon possess a significant overlap with the Stepmania community's in order to ascertain the
multiple affiliations that the community members may have with other fields and to determine the
influences that brought the group's lexicon to where it is today. This research will then cumulate into a
discussion regarding the group as a whole. Based upon the language that the collective uses, what
inferences are we able to make about its individual members? Who are they, where are they from, what
are they concerned with, and how does what they say reflect upon who they are?
In order to conduct this research and make these conclusions, I began by assembling a word list

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comprised of ninety-two entries that are commonly used within the Stepmania community and for the
most part are mutually intelligible amongst members that have at least a moderate degree of familiarity
with the field. These terms were taken from either CosmoVibe's Rhythm Simulation Guide, Flash
Flash Revolution's Official FFR Picture Dictionary, or my own field research from combing the
Flash Flash Revolution, Keybeat Online, and Stepmania message boards. These are words that are used
on a regular to semi-regular basis, have definitions and connotations that are Stepmania specific, and
serve as the only means of referring to a specific concept or idea within the field. A complete list of
these words and their accompanying definitions can be found in Appendix A.
The origins and etymologies surrounding the Stepmania community's jargon and slang are
particularly illustrative of the group's background and intersection with other communities. Of the
ninety-two words assembled, fifty-seven of them can be said to be loans; that is, words that originate in
either another field or language but have been borrowed and undergone a functional shift in order to
better fit the purposes of the Stepmania community (Haspelmath 13). The results of this search are
demonstrated in Table 1. There exists several trends in the linguistic origin of these loanwords, the
most striking of which being that all but three of them can be traced back to a language that stems from
Proto-Indo-European, namely those within the Germanic and Italic branches. Native English words
descending from either the Old, Middle, or Present Day English periods have the highest degree of
prevalence within the field's lexicon, owing to articles such as flow, layer, freeze, stop, pattern, stream,
and mash (Flow, Layer, Freeze, Stop, Pattern, Stream, Mash). The Germanic vocabulary
tends to refer to more rudimentary concepts, especially those that owe themselves to physicality or
have tangible, real-world equivalents. The only other two noteworthy sources of Stepmania loanwords
are Latin or French, the former contributing connotation, relevance, interval, technicality, index, and
vibrating, (Connotation, Relevance, Interval, Technicality, Index, Vibrating) while the
latter gives modification, note, measure, gallop, marvelous, and attack (Modification, Note,

***** 3
Measure, Gallop, Marvelous, Attack). For the most part, terms that are more technical in
comparison to their Germanic counterparts are of Latin and French origin, especially if they are more
theoretical and do not have a one-to-one correspondence with something in the natural world
This feature of the Stepmania field's lexicon directly correlates with the English language as a
whole as well. In the Old English period, Germanic words were either borrowed or invented for terms
that were relevant to a person's day-to-day life; it was not until the Middle English period when there
was both increased interaction with the French and a higher standard of living that many French and
Latin loanwords were incorporated into the language as necessary. Although there were some
exceptions, the majority of which cultural in nature, basic or core vocabulary items that had already
experienced widespread diffusion with English speakers were left alone and remained in the language
(Haspelmath 2). The striking similarities between the Stepmania community's and the English-speaking
community's means of refining, responding, and codifying their respective fields provides evidence that
the two are connected to one another to a significant degree.
The fact that the source of every single loanword can be traced back to the Proto-Indo-European
family is particularly startling given that Stepmania and all subsequent 4key rhythm games can be
considered offshoots from the game Dance Dance Revolution, itself a Japanese creation. Despite
Stepmania's close ties to the east, not a single Japonic or Altaic word has managed to become part of
the standard English-speaking community lexicon. Since the purposes of slang and jargon are crosscultural, it makes sense that the Japanese should have their own corresponding terms for every item or
concept that the English-speaking community felt was relevant enough to require codification, so why
were those words ignored in favor of creating new ones? The reason is mostly historical. The earliest
iterations of Dance Dance Revolution and Stepmania were quite primitive compared to their modern
day predecessors and as a result many of the articles of slang and jargon did not yet exist because the
concepts that they refer to did not exist as well. It was not until 2004, six years after the initial release

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of Dance Dance Revolution, that Roxor's derivative In The Groove introduced such gameplay elements
as mines, hands, more complex chart structures, and the ability to make and play custom songs as well
(Konami). Since there exists two wholly separate glossaries, one for the Japanese community and
another for the English one, and since ongoing advancements in the field necessitate the creation of
new jargon and slang in response, it can be said that contact between the two groups either was or still
is quite minimal. This makes sense given that the Japanese and North American iterations of Dance
Dance Revolution are not the same: different soundtracks, charts, timing windows, and gameplay
elements serve to separate the two. In addition, In The Groove was only released in America, meaning
that Japanese players could only experience the new features if their local arcade was willing to pay the
high costs of importing and a machine that weighs nearly a thousand pounds (Konami). Differential
treatment by the industry and a deficit of communication alike played a part in ensuring that the two
communities would remain autonomous and necessitate their own unique lexicons.
When the community decides to indoctrinate and subsequently popularize a term that is unique
from all other fields and not a functional shift, the methods of compounding, clipping, acronyms, and
affixing are by far the most widely appropriated. Table 2 provides the distribution of how the
remaining thirty-five words in the glossary are constructed and given meaning.
Compounding is the most commonplace method of lexical creation for the Stepmania
community. It is thanks to the method of compounding that such terms as minifreeze, jumpstream,
runningmen, hardpain, blackflag, notechart, and of course the word Stepmania itself are given
existence. These terms, while unique to the field, are forged out of linguistic components that have
been borrowed from other fields and/or languages. The terms are generally self-explanatory noun-noun
or verb-noun combinations such as blackflag and jumpstream, but some are more metaphorical or
historical in nature; for example, runningmen are named as such due to how a person who is hitting the
pattern on a dance pad appears to mimic the motions of a person running in place, and blackflag arose

***** 5
after In The Groove 2 would place a cartoon black flag next to your score on the results screen if you
managed to earn a score of one Great but everything else Perfect or above.
Clipping is another highly potent source of novel word creation, owing to such terms as quad,
jack, combo, CMod, XMod, step, and Stepman. It tends to occur whenever the community
uses longer or more complex words with enough frequency that their abbreviated forms can still be
fully intelligible even without all of its components intact. In addition, clipping can sometimes manifest
itself as a back formation from previously existing words: Stepman from Stepmania is one of the more
interesting examples of this phenomenon. This trend of condensing and simplifying wherever and
whenever possible is a fairly common practice and is not limited to single words either. Indeed, any
phrases that are longer than two or three words are more often than not converted into acronyms: Wall
of Death becomes WOD, Beats Per Minute becomes BPM, Notes Per Second becomes NPS, Full
Combo becomes FC, Marvelous Attack becomes MA, and Flash Flash Revolution is almost exclusively
referred to as FFR. These acronyms effectively replace the original terms and become parts of speech
in and of themselves, wholly synonymous with their expanded counterparts. Although a player may
recognize that an FC and a Full Combo are one in the same, the term FC is not reliant on its nonacronym form for meaning and may be used interchangeably in the same way that chord and jump are
able to reference the same item and have no distinguishing traits to separate one from the other as far as
definitions are concerned. The commonality of acronyms within the community's lexicon dates the
Stepmania field as belonging to the Present Day English period since acronyms are a relatively recent
method of word creation (Millward and Hayes 334). Further contributing to this penchants for brevity
is the Stepmania community's preferred means of communication; that is, the internet. Typing, like
handwriting, takes time and effort, thus meaning that lexical shortcuts will be incorporated and
standardized at an accelerated rate compared to more traditional mediums such as print (Flamand 34).
When affixing is concerned, Latin prefixes and suffixes provide a rich source of derivation

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potential and result in a trend whereby new words are created using loan-inflections in combination
with native articles, generally nouns and verbs. An example of this can be realized in the form of
combobreaker; combo- is a clipping of the Old French combination (Combination) while -breaker
is a back formation of the Old English brecan (Break). Exceptions do exist, however, such as in
polyrhythm which uses Latin for both its suffix and stem (Rhythm). The most popular form of
affixing, however, comes from adding the -manias suffix to a variety of stems, such as in
subjectivemanias or expressivemanias. This practice has taken on the form of an inside joke of sorts
amongst the community where new words with the -manias suffix can be created at will. Seeing as how
variation and originality are vital in ensuring that the humor of the joke obtains longevity, many of
these terms do not diffuse into the community and become obsolete following their initial usage.
Strangely enough, despite Stepmania's primary centralization around music, sound, and rhythm,
there exists all but one echoic word in the field's lexicon: boo. Even more peculiar is that boo is the
only term that can potentially refer to more than one concept. In Flash Flash Revolution, a boo is a
judgment that results from pressing a key when there isn't a note there (The Official FFR Picture
Dictionary), while in Stepmania it is the result of not holding a freeze note for the full length of time
denoted by the chart (CosmoVibe). Whether this homonym arose coincidentally or whether one of the
games were influenced by the other is impossible to determine given the deficit of transparency
regarding both games' creation process.
When distinguishing Stepmania slang from Stepmania jargon, there exists a general trend in
which slang acts as either a response to preexisting jargon or refers to the tangible or perceived
physicality of an act through analogy. Slang that is a product of jargon is usually created by clipping,
such as how the verb step and the proper noun Stepman are both derived from Stepmania, or by back
formation, such as how the slang verb streaming results from the jargon stream. When analogies enter
the community's lexicon, they arise more often than not as slang; for instance, a jump is any two notes

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that are hit simultaneously due to pad players needing to jump to perform such an act (The Official
FFR Picture Dictionary). Other times slang refers to infamous charts, characters, or note patterns: a
cameljack is any triplet where the first and last note are on the same arrow and occurs at a high enough
speed that they must be hit as jackhammers. The term itself is in reference to Flash Flash Revolution's
notechart for the song Camel which was one of the first charts to prominently feature this pattern. In
addition, many of the terms that refer to physicality, such as jump or hand or quad, show the Stepmania
community's connection, overlap, and derivative nature from the four panel pad community which it is
based on. As with many online societies, a deep familiarity with the community as well as its history is
necessary in order to decode the many references to its past or present that its slang refers to (Sornig 1).
It would be wrong to think of Stepmania as its own completely independent field, thoroughly
separated from all others. Members of the Stepmania community do not pledge sole allegiance to the
game and, as such, often cross pollinate with other disciplines. This diversity of communal interests is
both manifested and reflected in the group's choice of language as well (Flamand 5). Of the numerous
and highly varied disciplines that can be accounted for having made at least some sort of substantial
influence on the Stepmania community's lexicon, the three with the greatest contributions are the
musical or artistic, the technological or scientific, and the military worlds. Much of the language
utilized by the 4key community overlaps with one or more of these aforementioned fields, and in some
rare cases with all three of them. A visual representation of the specific words that fall under each of
these categories is available in the form of Chart 1.
As can be seen, the richest source of communal overlap is with that of the musical or artistic
disciplines. This should not come as much of a surprise considering the fact that Stepmania's existence
is musical in nature and hinges upon codified musical theories in order to properly function. Some of
the words that are adopted from the musical realm experience minor functional shifts to better suit the
needs of Stepmania, such as how the word note is changed to refer to an arrow rather than a musical

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tone, while others, such as sightread or BPM, retain their traditional usage and are mutually intelligible
across both fields.
The next most robust source of overlap is with the technological or scientific worlds. Much like
with the musical borrowings, the overlap with this field is to be expected given the nature and form of
Stepmania itself. Stepmania is a video game and is thus subject to the exact same sort of generalized
articles of slang and jargon that are used in reference to other video games as well. Certain Stepmania
releases may have bugs and glitches, or perhaps it fails to properly function from one person's
computer to the next; representing these potential problems in language is essential if one wishes to
remedy them. Similarly, the most common of errors become indoctrinated into the community and may
even become a source of slang: lag is such a common complaint amongst those who competitively play
Flash Flash Revolution that it has become an inside joke of sorts, all the way to the point that some
affectionately refer to the game as Lag Lag Revolution on occasion. Words that overlap with the
technological and scientific community tend to have a one-to-one correspondence with their original
uses, save for jackhammer and measure which refer to a particular pattern and a four beat stretch of a
chart respectively.
The final richest source of overlap is that with the military. At first this might seem like a fairly
peculiar source of overlap. After all, how could a rhythm game that makes no political or societal
commentary and lacks absolutely any sort of violence or bloodshed whatsoever be related to warfare?
The answer lies in Stepmania's existence as a competitive game. As with most other video games,
Stepmania supplies players with an objective for them to complete. The completion of this objective
results in a victory, while failing to do so results in a loss. Stepmania's structure necessitates that the
player must struggle in order to succeed, a conflict which is then likened to life and death through both
a requirement for success and in the ways that the game opts to include obstacles that can lead the
player down the path to failure, or in other words death. The military realm provides the nomenclature

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for features that either harm the player, such as mine and the corresponding pattern minefield, or keep
track of the player's performance, such as attack and health. For the most part, every word
corresponding to the military world has experienced a functional shift from its original usage in other
fields and would be intelligible to both fields only through careful inference.
Given this analysis of the jargon and slang that is frequently employed and jointly understood
by the Stepmania community at large, what sort of inferences and conclusions can be made about the
community and its composition? Firstly, it is safe to assume that the community is predominantly male.
This is reflected in the way that words such as Stepman or runningmen have experienced widespread
diffusion yet no female oriented or gender neutral equivalent for these terms exist. The slang that exists
in response to the jargon, particularly using jacking as both a euphemism for male masturbation and for
hitting a specific arrow pattern, is also reflective of the prevalence of males. The word jack is also
particularly relevant insofar that it grounds the community as being primarily North American. Jack is
a clipping of jackhammer, a word which is generally only used in North America since most other parts
of the world refer to the particular tool as a pneumatic drill (Horobin 1195). Jackhammer's introduction
and subsequent acceptance by the community at large demonstrates its geographic properties. The
community is primarily English-speaking due to its tendency to utilize or borrow words that are either
natively Germanic or from one of the Italic languages such as French or Latin, thus acting as a
reflection upon the English language as a whole. The English-speaking community's deficit of Japonic
or Altaic vocabulary demonstrates that it operates on a fairly autonomous level and has minimal
interaction with non-English speaking communities of similar or identical focus. The community is
generally not religious as the only explicit mention of religion across all the terms is that the
multiplication symbol used in Xmod was originally chosen to represent Jesus' cross (Stallings 230-5).
The vast amount of linguistic crossover with other fields shows how the community's interests are
multidimensional. Many have an interest in music or the arts and are drawn to Stepmania due to its

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unique portrayal and ways of interacting with preexisting songs, while others are drawn by the more
technical aspects and aspire to help better the inner-workings of the game itself through customization
add-ons or standalone unofficial modifications of the original game engine. Of course, these are not the
only outside interests that the community has some sort of venture in: it is both outside the scope of the
paper and functionally unfeasible to trace out each and every one of these other sources of interaction.
The existence of various definitions for words that correspond to the physicality of pad play, such as
chord existing for jump or holdstream being used interchangeably with freezestream, demonstrates an
active attempt for some 4key players to differentiate themselves from pad players and to make their
preferred style of play its own unique, self-sufficient culture. Even if the words that are chosen as
alternatives to the withstanding terms often coincide with those found within the musical world, they
nevertheless serve to remove the obsolete physical references that bound keyboard play to pad play.
However, since there is a considerable degree of overlap between the pad and keyboard communities
and with many members belonging to both, this viewpoint is not representative of the community as a
whole, but rather a sizable minority. The methods utilized to create new articles of language also show
how the community tends to think and make sense of their world through metaphor or analogy; in
addition to the earlier example of cameljack, other words that demonstrate this feature include stream,
jackhammer, gallop, jump, and burst. Comparing certain features of a notechart to other items or
phenomenons that exist within the physical world is particularly useful for jargon creation, while
references and comparisons to popular or infamous community members, notecharts, or historic events
are the most popular sourced of slang creation. Again, whether this particular feature of the
community's lexicon is illustrative of the Stepmania community's thinking process or is merely a
general trend in language creation across similar fields is outside the scope of this paper.
Even with only a cursory analysis of the numerous articles of specialized slang and jargon that
are in widespread diffusion across the diverse Stepmania community, there exists a significant number

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of trends in the etymologies of the language, the rationales behind why certain loanwords that originate
from other disciplines receive functional shifts, the methodologies employed in novel word creation,
the process of slang forgery, and the overlap between other fields to make substantiated comments
about the community as a whole. It is possible that the techniques and approaches to language that the
Stepmania collective has put into practice can prove to be relevant and generalizable to other
communities of similar interest and domain, such as other rhythm game communities or simply online
societies in general. In addition, the systematized approach to linguistic composition and dissemination
presented in this paper would be useful in predicting what sorts of articles of slang or jargon are more
likely to be chosen, popularized, and adopted by the community in the future. For example, an article
of jargon created by affixing with a Germanic stem and Italic inflection is much more likely to be well
received as opposed to an echoic word that is not of Proto-Indo-European origin. Language is
constantly changing, and the Stepmania community is no exception. New iterations of the game,
refinements in notecharting or theory, and the continual flux of the membership base each ensure that
the group never stagnates. Unfortunately for us, only time will be able to tell of the effects and changes
that the group's lexicon and language may or may not experience as a result of this continuous
evolution.

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Works Cited
"attack, n., 1a". OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University Press. 8 November 2013.
break, v., I.1a. OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University Press. 8 November 2013.
"combination, n., 1". OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University Press. 8 November 2013.
"connotation, n., 1a". OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University Press. 8 November 2013.
CosmoVibe. "Rhythm Simulation Guide." Rhythm Simulation Library. CosmoVibe, n.d. Web. 8 Nov.
2013.
Flamand, Eveline. Deciphering L33t5p34k: Internet Slang on Message Boards. Ghent University.
2007-8. Web. 11 November 2013.
"flow, n.1, 1a". OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University Press. 8 November 2013.
"freeze, n.1, 1". OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University Press. 8 November 2013.
"gallop, n.1a". OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University Press. 8 November 2013.
Haspelmath, Martin. Loanword Typology: Steps toward a systematic cross-linguistic study of lexical
borrowability. The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. June 2003. Web.
9 November 2013.
Horobin, Wendy, ed. How It Works: Science and Technology. Vol. 3. New York: Marshall Cavendish,
2003. Print.
"index, n., 1". OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University Press. 8 November 2013.
"interval, n., 1a". OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University Press. 8 November 2013.
Konami Corp. v. Roxor Games, Inc.. 445 F. Supp. 2D 725. Dist. Court, ED Texas 2006. Google
Scholar. Web. 14 November 2013.
"layer, v, 1a". OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University Press. 8 November 2013.
"marvellous | marvelous, adj., adv., and n., 1a". OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University
Press. 8 November 2013.

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"mash, v.1, I.1a". OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University Press. 8 November 2013.
measure, n.1, 17a". OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University Press. 8 November 2013.
Millward, C. M. , and M. Hayes. A Biography Of The English Language. 3rd ed. Boston: Wadsworth,
Cengage Learning, 2012. Print.
"modification, n., 1". OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University Press. 8 November 2013.
"note, n.2, II.6a". OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University Press. 8 November 2013.
"The Official FFR Picture Dictionary." FlashFlashRevolution. FlashFlashRevolution, 11 Oct. 2010.
Web. 8 Nov. 2013.
pattern, n. and adj., 1a". OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University Press. 8 November 2013.
"relevance, n., 2a". OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University Press. 8 November 2013.
"rhythm, n.2a". OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University Press. 8 November 2013.
Sornig, Karl. Lexical Innovation: A Study of Slang, Colloquialisms, and Casual Speech. Amsterdam:
Benjamins, 1981. Print.
Stallings, Lynn. "A Brief History of Algebraic Notation." School Science and Mathematics 100.5
(2000): 230-35. Print.
stop, n.2, 1a". OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University Press. 8 November 2013.
"stream, v., 1a". OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University Press. 8 November 2013.
"technicality, n., 1a". OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University Press. 8 November 2013.
"vibrating, n.". OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University Press. 8 November 2013.

***** 14
Appendix A: Glossary
Air: A component of the Groove Radar that denotes how many jumps there are in a chart relative to its
total length.
Amazing: The most accurate judgment in Flash Flash Revolution.
Average: The fourth most accurate judgment in Stepmania and Flash Flash Revolution. In Stepmania
an Average is a combobreaker while in Flash Flash Revolution it is not.
Blackflag: The unfortunate anomaly of a blackflag is when you get a result of 1 good clean. (1-0-00) (CosmoVibe). Originated in Roxor's In The Groove game.
Boo: In Stepmania, a Boo is the least accurate judgment that isn't a miss. In Flash Flash Revolution, it
is a judgment that results from pressing an arrow key when there is no corresponding note near the
receptors.
BPM: Beats per minute.
Burst: Any short but particularly fast pattern. It is characterized by being significantly harder than the
parts of the chart near it (CosmoVibe).
Cameljack: Any triplet where the first and last note are on the same arrow and occurs at a high enough
speed that they must be hit as jackhammers. The term itself is in reference to FFR's notechart for the
song Camel which was one of the first charts to prominently feature this pattern.
Chancellor: A term that has taken on the original role of Stepman. Used for those that are deemed to be
a significant part of the community. Originally an inside joke amongst a particular group of stepartists
and players that referred to themselves as the Dark Chancellors, the term has since been adopted by
other groups such as the Light Chancellors.
Chaos: A component of the Groove Radar that denotes how many notes there are that are not quarters
or eighths relative to its total length.
Chart: All of the notes that make up a level for a song (CosmoVibe). Variations include notechart
and stepchart.
Chord: Generic term for 2 or more notes sharing the same point in time (CosmoVibe).
Chordjack: See Jumpjack.
Chordstream: See Jumpstream.
Chordtrill: See Jumptrill.
CMod: The 'C' stands for constant. C-mod refers to a type of speed mod that adjusts the effects of
BPM changes and stops so that it always scrolls at a fixed speed. It is frequently used because some
charts use ridiculous x-mods for syncing purposes that would otherwise make the chart unplayable
(CosmoVibe).
Combo: A streak of notes that do not have combo breakers (ComsoVibe).
ComboBreaker: Any judgment that results in a break of a combo. This includes Good, Boo, and Miss
in Stepmania and Miss in Flash Flash Revolution.
Connotation: The association of certain notes or patterns with concepts or sounds (CosmoVibe).
Crossover: A pattern that when hit on pad or played on index requires players to physically crossover
and face away from the screen in front of them. For example, 421343124.
Dump: Slang term used to describe a chart that is either: a) purposefully difficult even if the notes and
patterns that occur aren't musically relevant, or; b) a chart that sacrifices playability and/or refinement
in order to boost its difficulty, be it artificially or otherwise. Dumps belonging to the former case are
often creative and are appreciated by higher level players in the community while the latter are seen as
either fun or lazy depending on the level of refinement.
File: See Chart.
Flam: A pair of notes on different columns that are so fast that they seem to be hit in the same motion.
Typically 24ths or faster. (ComsoVibe).

***** 15
Flow: How smooth a chart is to play. Flow-interrupting aspects of a chart are those that seem
unintuitive and abrupt (CosmoVibe).
Freeze: A component of the Groove Radar that denotes how many freeze or hold notes there are in a
chart relative to its total length.
Freeze Note: A note that has a start and an end. The hold is scored both by how accurately you hit the
start and whether it is held down until the end. The act of hitting the initial note but failing to keep the
note held is called dropping a hold (CosmoVibe).
Full Combo/FC: No combobreakers were hit during the entire duration of the chart.
Gallop: Two notes that are hit in close enough succession that they resemble the sound of a horse's
gallop. Can be joined together to create gallop chains.
Gap: See Offset.
Ghosting: When a key is not registered by the game even though the player physically hits the key
correctly on the keyboard (CosmoVibe).
Good: The third most accurate judgment in Flash Flash Revolution.
Grace Note: See Flam.
Great: The third most accurate judgment in Stepmania.
Hand: Any three note chord.
Hardpain: Slang adjective used to describe charts or sections of charts that are physically difficult to
hit and require high amounts of stamina and concentration.
Health: A value that tracks a player's performance on a chart. Poor judgments such as misses or boos
and obstacles such as mines lower the player's health. If a player's health reaches zero then they will
fail the song and receive a game over.
Health Bar: A visual representation of a player's Health.
Holdstream: A stream with holds in it.
Index: This is one of the more common play styles where you use your two index fingers on the
arrow keys (or another key setup similar to the arrow keys) (ComsoVibe). This style is popular with
players that are either new to the game or are branching out from pad play.
Interval: The speed at which notes come relative to measures. 4ths means four notes per measure
(beats), 8ths means eight notes per measure (downbeats + upbeats) and so on (CosmoVibe).
Jackhammer/Jack: Notes that fall under [t]he same column over and over in quick succession. Jacks
are noteworthy because of how difficult they are to hit, especially at high speeds (CosmoVibe).
Judgments: The denotations of how accurately a player hits a note. The difference between each of
these judgments are only milliseconds apart; for example, to earn a Marvelous judgment, the player
must hit the note either 22.5 milliseconds before or after it is perfectly centered over the receptors.
Jump: See chord.
Jumpjack: Any jack that is hit simultaneously with another.
Jumpstream: A stream but with chords (of two notes or more) in it frequently. Can be sparse or
dense (CosmoVibe).
Jumptrill: A trill consisting of 2-chords or larger instead of single notes. Noteworthy in that, despite
its higher density, it is typically not any harder, but is more likely to contain one handed trills
(CosmoVibe).
Lag: When a game engine stalls or stutters. More often than not results in the player receiving poor
judgments that they would not have gotten had the game not lagged.
Layering: Laying down notes for one instrument, then laying down notes for another instrument, etc
for 2 or more instruments (CosmoVibe).
Marvelous: The most accurate judgment in Stepmania.
Mashing: Not being able to read the chart at all and just randomly hitting notes at what is thought to
be the right density (CosmoVibe).

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Measure: A part of a chart that is four beats long. It is always four beats due to the .SM file format.
Not to be confused with the musical definition of a measure, which can be any length (CosmoVibe).
Mine: A note that is supposed to be avoided. In fact, holding the key corresponding to its column
when it passes the receptor causes it to explode. Upon explosion, it will drain the player's health meter
(CosmoVibe).
Minefield: A pattern that incorporates a substantially large amount of mines. It is often utilized either
to increase the difficulty of a chart without altering the withstanding notes or to represent musical
features that would otherwise not fit within the scheme of the chart.
Minifreeze: A hold so short that it is impossible (or in some cases, almost impossible) to drop
(CosmoVibe).
Minijack: Shorter jackhammers that are generally four notes at the very most.
Minitrill: A short trill, typically five notes or less (CosmoVibe).
Miss: Judgment in Stepmania and Flash Flash Revolution that is given if a player fails to hit a note
entirely.
NG: A judgment in Stepmania that stands for No Good. It is the antithesis of an OK in that it results
from not holding down a freeze not for the full length of time denoted by the chart.
Note: A single unit, often representing a single sound, that must be pressed at the precise moment it
lines up with the receptors.
Notecharter: One who makes charts (CosmoVibe).
NPS: Notes per second. Often used as a means of referencing chart difficulty in objective terms.
Offset: A measure of how far into the song the first beat of the chart is. Note that negative values
indicate the chart starts later, while positive values indicate the chart starts before the song
(CosmoVibe).
OK: A judgment in Stepmania that denotes a freeze note being held for the full length of time denoted
by the chart.
PA/MA Attack: Aiming for [judgment]. Having good [judgment] attack means having a high
proportion of notes at that judgment or higher. Only refers to judgments higher than the minimum
judgment not considered to be a combo breaker (CosmoVibe).
Pad: Style of play that has the player pressing the corresponding notes on a four panel dance pad with
their feet. This is the 4key community's main antecedent.
Pattern: A specific way in which the columns of sequential notes relate to each other (CosmoVibe).
Perfect: The second most accurate judgment in Stepmania and Flash Flash Revolution.
Pitch Relevance: Choosing patterns and columns specifically to reflect a melody line ascending or
descending, repeating, and changing (CosmoVibe).
Playtesting: The act of playing a chart to test it (CosmoVibe).
Polyrhythm: Two different rhythms, generally a swing and any other, that must be hit in conjunction
with one another.
Quad: A four note chord in which all arrows are hit simultaneously.
(Groove) Radar: A circular chart that is generated by Stepmania to give players an idea of how
difficult the chart will be. The five components are Steam, Voltage, Air, Freeze, and Chaos.
Roll: A pattern that repeats a sequence of notes over and over, for example 1234123412341234. Rolls
can be anywhere between 3 to 6 notes, and the repeating sequence itself does not use a column more
than once (CosmoVibe).
Runningmen: A specific stream pattern in which half of the notes are relegated to a single column as in
a trill but the other half alternate amongst the remaining three columns.
Sightread: The first time playing a chart. Called as such because of the related practice of
sightreading a piece of music (CosmoVibe).
Spread: The community-accepted name of the community-accepted standard playstyle of keyboard

***** 17
simulation, where the player uses one finger per button per column, using both hands symmetrically,
going from most dominant (index) to least dominant (rings, pinkies) fingers based on the number of
keys (ComsoVibe).
Step: The act of creating a chart.
Stepartist: See Notecharter.
Stepman: Slang term that began as a name for those that were either community veterans or possessed
a high degree of skill but has sense been expanded to include anybody that regularly plays Stepmania.
Stop: A pause in the chart that lasts a certain number of milliseconds (CosmoVibe).
Stream: 1. A long run of notes mostly at the same speed (CosmoVibe). 2. A component of the
Groove Radar that denotes how many notes there are in a chart relative to its length.
Streaming: The act of hitting stream.
Subjectivemanias: Slang term that is often used proverbially in reference to how chart creation is a
subjective art form and that everybody has varying opinions on what constitutes good and bad or
proper from improper.
Swing: An aspect of the music where every upbeat is slightly late, forming a X.XX.XX.XX looking
pattern. Types of swing include 24th swing (standard swing), 12th swing (standard swing), and 64th
swing (beat split into 9/16ths and 7/16ths, also known as light swing) depending on what note interval
they use. Other intervals for swing are uncommon but possible (CosmoVibe).
Technicality: How well a chart follows mechanical rules of sync, transcription accuracy, and
consistency (CosmboVibe).
Trill: Alternating between two columns. A one-handed trill alternates notes on the same hand, and is
generally harder to hit than a two-handed trill (CosmoVibe).
Triplet: Any three note pattern that occurs separately from surrounding patterns and is across two or
three columns.
Vibrating: Hitting a very fast jack by actually making [your hands or fingers] vibrate. Takes a bit of
practice (CosmoVibe).
Voltage: A component of the Groove Radar that denotes how dense the densest eight beat stretch of a
chart is.
WOD: Wall of Death. A ridiculous amount of notes, often rolls or jackhammers, that have such a high
density they appear less like individual notes and more like a wall. More often than not this type of
pattern is reserved for joke charts or those of the highest difficulty.
XMod: A speed modifier that multiplies a chart's BPM and associated scroll rate by a fixed amount.
For example, if a chart is 200BPM an XMod of 2.5x will make it scroll at 500BPM.
-manias Suffix: Arising from Subjectivemanias, a inflectional suffix that can be attached to words or
stems in order to make their meaning Stepmania centric.

***** 18
Appendix B: Charts, Graphs, and Tables
Table 1: The Sources of Stepmania Loanwords
Source Language

Number of Words

Germanic

25

French

15

Latin

13

Italian

Unknown Origin

Total

57

Table 2: Types of Novel Word Creation Methodology in the Stepmania Lexicon

Methodology
Number of Words
Compounding

16

Clipping

Acronym

Affixing

Echoic

Total

35

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Chart 1: The Sources of Overlap That The Stepmania Lexicon Has With Other Fields