🥌Glossary

Terms

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Blank end Blank end

An end that finishes with no team's stone in the house, so no one scores. The hammer carries over unchanged, which makes this a real tactical choice: a team with the hammer stuck in a cluttered situation where two points aren't available will deliberately roll their last stone through the house to keep the hammer for the next end. The value of this choice drops as fewer ends remain.

Broom Broom

The sweeping tool, also called a brush, made of a carbon or fibreglass shaft with a replaceable-pad head. Skips also plant the broom upright to mark a target. Following the 2015-16 controversy known as "Broomgate," when directional fabric heads were found to essentially let sweepers steer a stone, sanctioned competitions now allow only a single approved fabric.

Burned stone Burned stone

A foul in which a moving stone is touched by a broom, foot, clothing or any other object. Handled by convention rather than an official: if it happens before the stone reaches the tee line, the opposing skip may remove it; if after, affected stones may be placed where they would have stopped. Self-reporting a burned stone is this sport's strongest unwritten rule.

Button Button

The small one-foot-diameter circle at the exact centre of the house, and the final target of every draw. Score is decided purely by distance from the button's centre, so all of curling's geometry is calculated against this one point. When two stones are too close to call by eye, an adjustable measuring stick is fitted into a hole at the button's centre and swung between them, itself one of curling broadcasting's signature scenes.

Come-around Come-around

A draw that curves around a guard to hide behind it. It's considered the sport's most characteristically curling shot because it directly exploits the way a stone curls. Landed well, it leaves a stone the opponent can't reach on a straight line and is effectively unremovable. Too light and it stops beside the guard as a second guard; too heavy and it slides past the house entirely out the back.

Curl Curl

The sideways bend a rotating stone develops as it travels — the phenomenon that gives the sport its name. On championship ice a draw typically curls a metre or more, curling most in its final, slower stretch. That's why a fast takeout travels almost straight while a draw sweeps a wide arc, and it's the reason a come-around hiding behind a guard is even possible — curl is the geometric premise the whole sport's strategy is built on.

Delivery Delivery

The full throwing motion, from pushing off the hack through a low crouch and slide to releasing the stone. The hand must leave the handle before crossing the near hog line, monitored electronically at the elite level through sensor-equipped handles. This single motion is effectively curling's whole set of fundamentals, and sliding in the same direction every time has to come before weight control means anything.

Draw Draw

A shot thrown to stop at a chosen spot inside the house without hitting another stone. It's curling's most basic shot and also its hardest, needing centimetre-level accuracy after travelling roughly 28 metres from the hack to the button. Championship ice takes a draw through the two hog lines in roughly 13-14.5 seconds, and that speed shifts end to end as the ice changes.

End End

The basic scoring unit of a match, comparable to an inning in baseball. Each team alternates throwing eight stones, sixteen total, only one team scores, and the next end plays in the opposite direction. Championship four-person games run ten ends; many club events and mixed doubles run eight. A team that judges the match unwinnable conceding before all scheduled ends are played is normal and expected in this sport.

Extra end Extra end

An additional end played to break a tie after regulation ends are complete. The match ends the instant either team scores, and the hammer for it is decided by the outcome of the last regulation end. Curling has no draws, so extra ends repeat as needed. The team with the hammer wins overwhelmingly just by scoring one point, which is exactly why managing the hammer in the final regulation end matters so much.

Force Force

Holding the team with the hammer to a single point. Because the hammer, the last stone in an end, is worth roughly a point of value on its own, an opponent who uses it and scores only one has effectively lost the defensive battle for that end, since the hammer then passes to the other side for the next end. Teams track how often they force an opponent without the hammer as a defensive statistic.

Free Guard Zone Free Guard Zone

The area between the near hog line and the house; a stone stopped here can't be removed from play early in the end. Introduced internationally as a four-rock rule in 1993 and extended to five rocks from the 2018-19 season, covering the end's first five stones. A violation sends the offending stone off and resets all stones to their prior positions. It exists to stop a stronger team from clearing the sheet outright, pushing ends toward higher scoring.

Freeze Freeze

A draw thrown to stop directly against the front of an opponent's stone, curling's most prized defensive shot. Because any hit on a frozen stone pushes the target stone backward while the thrown stone settles into its place, it becomes essentially impossible to remove. Used deliberately when a team without the hammer needs to fill the four-foot. A slightly heavy throw simply becomes a takeout instead, making this a high-difficulty, low-success-rate shot.

Gripper Gripper

The rubber sole of a curling shoe, or a slip-on rubber cover fitted over a slider to stop slipping. It's the foot that provides friction pushing off the hack. For beginners it functions almost as safety equipment: the single habit of covering the slider with a gripper cover while walking across the sheet prevents most of the backward falls that end in a hit to the back of the head.

Guard Guard

A stone stopped short of the house but past the hog line, positioned to shield a stone behind it. Placed on the centre line it's a centre guard protecting a button draw; placed to the side it's a corner guard, opening a come-around angle to the wing. It's the standard first stone for the team without the hammer, and under the five-rock Free Guard Zone rule it can't be removed early in the end.

Hack Hack

The rubber foothold set into the ice behind each house, which a thrower pushes off from. There are two, side by side; right-handers use the right hack and left-handers the left. The direction of force at the very start of the delivery is set here, so a slightly wrong foot angle in the hack keeps a stone from travelling down the same line every time, no matter how good the rest of the technique is.

Hammer Hammer

The right to throw the last stone in an end, and the most valuable asset in the game because it lets a team react to everything the opponent has already done. The first end's hammer is decided by the Last Stone Draw, and after that it passes to whichever team failed to score the previous end. Scoring only one point with the hammer is usually a loss on balance, which is why teams track how often they convert the hammer into two or more points rather than just total score.

Hit and roll Hit and roll

A shot that removes an opponent's stone while rolling the thrower's own stone into a chosen position. It isn't simply about removal — the point is leaving a favourable stone in that spot or tucking it behind a guard — so the angle of contact and the weight both have to be calculated together. A dead-square hit that stays almost in place is called a nose hit; the more glancing the contact, the more the shooter's stone rolls.

Hog line Hog line

A line drawn 21 feet from each tee line, governing two separate rules. First, the thrower must release the stone before it crosses the near hog line, or that stone is removed immediately — monitored electronically at elite level via sensor handles. Second, a thrown stone that fails to fully cross the far hog line is also removed.

House House

The set of concentric circles at each end of the sheet — from the outside in, the 12-foot, 8-foot and 4-foot rings, with the button at the centre. Any stone touching even the edge of the 12-foot circle, 3.66 metres across, is eligible to score; a stone entirely outside it doesn't count no matter how close it looks. Players describing a stone as "biting" the twelve or sitting in the eight are describing position relative to these rings.

In-turn and out-turn In-turn and out-turn

The two directions a stone can be rotated on release. For a right-handed thrower, a clockwise turn, wrist rotating inward, is an in-turn; a counter-clockwise turn, rotating outward, is an out-turn. Either curls the stone roughly a metre off a straight line. The two turns curl slightly differently and respond to the ice differently, so teams keep separate notes on how far each turn curls on a given sheet.

Last Stone Draw Last Stone Draw

A pre-game procedure, commonly abbreviated LSD, in which each team throws a stone toward the button to decide who gets the hammer for the first end; the team whose stone finishes closer to centre gets it. In round-robin play, the cumulative distance from these throws also serves as a tiebreaker between teams level on record, which can shake up final standings on the last day of qualifying.

Lead Lead

The position that throws the first two stones of an end. Because of the Free Guard Zone rule, the lead's two shots are usually guards or precise draws, requiring the most reliable draw weight on the team. The lead also has to sweep the remaining six stones they don't throw, making this the most physically demanding sweeping role on the team across a full match.

Mixed doubles Mixed doubles

A discipline played by one man and one woman per team, first held at a world championship in 2008 and an Olympic sport since Pyeongchang 2018. Played over eight ends with five stones per team, with one stone from each side pre-placed before every end begins. One player throws the first and last stones, the other the middle three. Scoring is fast and steals are frequent.

No-tick rule No-tick rule

A rule, applied internationally from the 2023-24 season, that also bans nudging a centre guard sideways, even one protected by the Free Guard Zone. The original Free Guard Zone only stopped a guard being knocked entirely out of play, so teams found a workaround by lightly clipping it to nudge it aside and open the centre. This closed that loophole, letting stones stay in play longer and increasing the frequency of steals.

Pebble Pebble

The tiny frozen droplets sprayed onto the sheet's surface before play. Stones ride on top of these bumps rather than on smooth ice, which both reduces contact friction and creates curl; without pebble, a stone barely curls and travels far less distance. Sixteen stones wear the pebble down as a game goes on, which is why ice speed and curl change from end to end, even on the same sheet.

Peel Peel

A hard takeout that removes a guard while also sending the shooter's own stone out of play, clearing the sheet cleanly. Used by the team with the hammer to remove an opponent's obstacles. Before the Free Guard Zone was introduced in 1993, this tactic was so effective that entire games sometimes finished 3-2, and the rule itself was created specifically to push peeling later into the end.

Power play Power play

A one-time-per-game repositioning option available to the team with the hammer in mixed doubles. It moves the two pre-placed stones from the centre line to one side of the sheet, shifting the house stone to the wing's 8-foot ring and the guard to the corner. This turns a symmetrical, crowded end into an asymmetric, more open one, roughly doubling the odds of a three-point-or-better score. When to use it is mixed doubles' signature tactical decision.

Second Second

The position that throws the third and fourth stones of an end. Their shots typically either use a guard the lead has set up or clear an opponent's guard, requiring the strongest takeout ability on the team along with confident come-around draws. Together with the lead, the second forms the bulk of a team's sweeping load, often making it the most physically taxing position on an elite team.

Sheet Sheet

The rectangular ice surface a game is played on; championship dimensions run 146 feet long by up to 16.5 feet wide (45.72 by 5 metres). The house and hack sit at each end with a 72-foot clear span between them. The surface isn't smooth — it's covered with frozen pebble droplets — and no two sheets curl exactly alike, nor does the same sheet stay consistent from the first end to the last.

Shot stone Shot stone

Whichever stone currently sits closest to the button, and therefore in scoring position at that moment. It's why broadcasts keep it labelled on screen throughout — knowing remaining throws and who holds shot stone tells you the state of an end at a glance. When two stones can't be separated by eye, a measuring stick settles it, and any stone not touching the house at all doesn't count regardless of how close it looks.

Skip Skip

The team's captain and tactical director, standing in the house to hold the broom as a target and call every shot. Traditionally throws the last two stones, though this isn't required, and some elite teams now have the skip throw earlier in the rotation instead. Agreeing the score with the opposing skip at the end of an end, and deciding whether to concede, also falls to this position.

Slider Slider

The low-friction sole material, typically Teflon or stainless steel, worn on the sliding foot during delivery — the left foot for a right-handed curler. Available in 3/16-inch and 1/4-inch thicknesses; thicker slides more and suits advanced curlers, while beginners generally find the thinner option easier to control. A slip-on version that fits over an ordinary shoe, at roughly $20-60, is the most sensible first piece of gear for anyone starting the sport.

Spirit of Curling Spirit of Curling

The sport's code of conduct, written into the front of the official rules. Players self-report their own fouls even when an official misses them, concede once a game is clearly unwinnable rather than run out the clock on a tired opponent, and raise a broom to acknowledge a good opponent shot. The post-game custom of the winning team buying the losing team a drink, called broomstacking, also falls under this code. Self-officiating in curling works because this norm is genuinely followed.

Steal Steal

Scoring while not holding the hammer. Because holding the last stone is assumed to be an advantage, a steal is one of the biggest momentum swings in curling, since stealing even a single point both scores and keeps the hammer at the same time. As the Free Guard Zone rule expanded, steals became noticeably more frequent, making even a multi-point lead with three ends left something that can realistically be overturned.

Stone Stone

A polished granite disc weighing 38-44 pounds (17.24-19.96 kg) with a maximum circumference of 91.4cm. Most are quarried from Ailsa Craig, a volcanic island off Scotland's west coast, prized because the rock has almost no porosity, so it doesn't absorb water and resists chipping. Contact with the ice happens only along a narrow ring on the base called the running band, not the full underside, and stones belong entirely to the venue rather than to individual players.

Sweeping Sweeping

Brushing the ice directly ahead of a moving stone to momentarily melt the pebble and reduce friction. It carries a stone several extra metres, flattens out its curl to straighten its path, and is the main tool for rescuing a shot that's slightly light or slightly off-line. Between the tee lines, only the throwing team can sweep; past the far tee line, one opposing player may sweep as well.

Takeout Takeout

A shot that hits an opponent's stone and drives it out of play. Thrown much harder than a draw; a hard takeout crosses the two hog lines in roughly 9 seconds and a controlled-weight hit around 11 seconds. The faster the shot, the less it curls and the easier it is to aim, but the harder it is to control where the shooter's own stone ends up after contact — balancing those two factors is central to picking any hit shot.

Tee line Tee line

The line crossing the house through the button, which marks the boundary for sweeping rights: once a stone crosses it, both the throwing team and one player from the opposing team may sweep it. How a burned stone is handled also changes depending on whether it happened before or after this line. Behind it sits a separate line entirely, the back line, and a stone that fully crosses the back line is removed immediately.

Vice-skip Vice-skip

Also called the third, the position that throws the fifth and sixth stones. Holds the broom and reads the line for the skip's shots, and works with the opposing vice-skip to agree the score once an end finishes. Also has the authority to call for a measurement when needed, making this position effectively the team's deputy captain and its acting official.

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