John Shuster will skip the Olympics, or, a guide to misleading curling vocabulary

Curling vocabulary and lingo can, at times, be confusing.

In the language of curling, some words are exactly what they seem. A broom is a broom (but make it sports); a stone or a rock is indeed the best way we can think to describe the round 50-pound weight you see slide across the ice. The ice is, in fact, ice. (But a sheet is also the ice!)

However, plenty other terms you’ll hear bandied about over the course of your newfound curling obsession can be slightly misleading, if your understanding is based solely on the words’ usual meanings. For example, the sport’s nickname — The Roaring Game — comes from the sound the stone makes as it moves across the ice. When a stone roars, it means to slide very fast across the ice. When a player roars, it means they slide a stone very fast. This isn’t tennis.

Let’s proceed.

Curling is played on sheets, which are rectangular areas of ice, approximately 146 feet in length by 15 feet in width. The short borders are called backboards. At either end of the sheet is “the house,” which is the name for the rings that serve as a target. The center-most circle is called the button and the actually bulls-eye is called the tee or the pin. There are also hog-lines, 10 meters (~32 feet) from each hack (footholds located 12 feet behind each button). The hog-lines represent the points at which the stone must be released (on the near end) and across which it must pass (on the far end) to be in play. (As a verb, “to hog” means to use too little force for it to clear the hog-line. A “hogged stone,” then, is a stone that did not pass the hog-line.)

A rink, however, is neither a synonym for sheet nor is it the space in which multiple sheets might be laid out side by side. A rink is, in fact, the curling word for a team. Your rink has four players: a lead, a second, a third (also called a vice-skip or a mate), and a skip.

The lead shoots (well, “delivers” or “plays”) his or her stone first. If someone leads a curling match, it simply means they delivered first. That’s the extent of the leading. The second is the second person to deliver. No tricks there. The third is, yes, the third person to deliver, but thirds are also called vice-skips or mates, and to explain that we have to explain skips. A skip is the captain of a curling team. He or she determines the rink’s strategy and directs plays. (There is quite a bit of strategy involved in deciding where the team should deliver or attempt to deliver the stones  They are the ones hollering “hurry” by the target (the house) to tell their teammates to sweep harder. Skip can also be a verb. So, “John Shuster skips fourth Olympics” does not in fact mean that Shuster would not be attending the Olympics, but rather that he will be attending in the most senior position. Skips also deliver stones, and vice-skips act as the skip when the skip is delivering their stones.

(The game structure of curling is eight or ten ends — innings, basically — in which each team delivers eight stones — two per person. Only one team can earn points in an end, and if no one earns any points, it’s called a blank end.)

Here are some more words.

During a stone’s journey to the house, said stone may curl — which just means it curves. Curlers will sweep (or brush) as directed by their skip to clear the preferred path for the stone. (Sweeping removes pebbles, which are the bumps of ice created as a result of water applied to the ice before the game begins.) If the stone is touched by a player or their equipment during its delivery, it becomes a burned stone and is removed from play. A hit is when a team delivers a stone with the express purpose of knocking out the opposing team’s stones and preventing points. The hammer is the last stone throne in an end. It’s considered a huge advantage to “have the hammer.”

In curling, weight is used to refer to force, and a heavy is a stone that’s delivered with too much force. Heavy ice is slow ice (requiring more force). Keen ice is fast ice. Straight ice typically results in less curl; stones curl a lot on swingy ice.

Next: 15 things to know and love about curling

There’s more, of course, every sport has an extensive vocabulary of terminology and slang, nuanced with colloquial meanings that you come to learn with deep immersion and years of fandom.

This, however, has hopefully gone some ways to making things slightly less confusing. At least where skipping and roaring is concerned.