Mortal Kombat 1 is closely approaching, and it’s looking to be the most mechanically sophisticated MK game to date. For countless players, this installment is going to be their diving point into competitive fighting games. This also means those players are going to navigate an ocean of terminology that saturates fighting game discourse. Gameplay vernacular can be fairly unintuitive. Some terms will be mundane words that have meanings exclusive to fighting games (e.g. special cancels, reversals). Others will be slang terms that have no direct connection to the meaning of the word (e.g. “meaties”). Others won’t even be in English…