Ludolect

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A lect (language variety) among players of a game, such as a physical or digital roleplaying game or any of many online video games.

    "Meronym: gamer word"

Example

More examples

"Clearly, there are subtle nuances between a highly technical jargon or 'tech-speak' (McGrath, 1998, p. 144) used by professional game developers and academic ludologists at one end of the spectrum, and general, popular discourse about games and gaming on the other. The former is an expert code, which requires in-depth insider knowledge and expertise, whereas the latter is largely a mainstream form of standard English, interspersed with gaming-related lexical items. In between the two sits what we may refer to as ‘ludolect’, or 'gamer slang'. There are a diversity of ludolects, some of which are closer to expert jargon, and others closer to mainstream varieties, and they also differ according to which game and game genre is being referred to."

Etymology

From ludo- + -lect.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.