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As a newbie diver, you may initially be overwhelmed by the amount of information you must absorb and eventually remember. And beyond all the theory which you will learn through books and videos, there is also a new set of behaviors and language that you will need to understand and assimilate.
Here below is a collection of commonly used diving words:
Air - a gas mixture containing 21percent oxygen, 78 percent nitrogen, and 1 percent other gasses (mainly argon); compressed air is held in a tank for scuba diving
Airsucker - the person on a dive who runs out of air first
Ascent - rising to the surface when diving; typically at the end of a dive.
Balloon - a new dry suit diver that has their feet suddenly fly above their head
Bottom Time - the length of your dive
Brail Diving - diving is very bad visibility
Buddy - the person you dive with; this is the person you discuss a dive plan with and you are both responsible for keeping each other safe
Danglies - stuff hanging off someone’s gear and dragging all over everything
Divemonster - divemaster candidate
Diver’s Makeup - snot you wear all over your face after a dive
De-fizzing - surface interval or offgassing
Eggbeater - someone who is way overweighted and has to kick while swimming vertically in order to stay off the bottom
Fart Bag - dry suit
Feeding the Fish - getting sick underwater. Can also be used to getting sick overboard while on a boat
First Stage - part of a scuba regulator; this attaches to the air tank
Giant Stride - a method of getting in the water where you take a large step off the boat or dock
Hoovers - people (usually new divers) who drain tanks super fast
Insta-buddy - getting paired up with a stranger
Leadweighter - that one diver on the boat that thinks they can never have enough weight, even with no wetsuit
Liveaboard - a cruise ship, yacht or other overnight boat that is tailored to scuba divers. Most often, this will have accommodations including beds, bathrooms, gear rentals, tanks and include meals
Logbook - a record of the scuba dives you've completed. This includes how deep you dived, your bottom time, who you dived with, where you dived, what you saw, how long your surface interval was, and other information relevant to your dive
Nitrogen Narcosis - an altered mental state that occurs when nitrogen enters the bloodstream at pressure. Divers experience this differently, but commonly compare it to feeling slightly intoxicated
Nitrox - for recreational diving, Nitrox (or Enriched Air Nitrox) refers to a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen where the oxygen concentration is more than 21 percent (which is the percentage of oxygen found in normal air). Most commonly refers to 32 percent oxygen in a tank
O-Ring - often made of rubber, these doughnut-shaped rings are used in various pieces of scuba gear to prevent air or water from getting in or out of that piece of gear
Patch - the guy that sews his patches on his wetsuit and brags about his diving
Pigpen - someone constantly on the bottom, stirring up sand or silt
Pony - a small diving cylinder which is fitted with an independent regulator, and carried by a scuba diver as an extension to the scuba set
Portable Urinal - a rental wetsuit
Rototilling - new divers that create a cloud of kicked up silt behind them, mimicking a tractor in a field
Sea Hippy - dolphin
Sea Panda - orca
Sea Puppies - seals or, for some people, sharks
Spare Air - what my buddy calls me since he’s an air hog and I always come back with half a tank
Tankmonkey - typically a divemaster candidate or junior crew member at the shop that has to load and unload after trips. Also known as: Diveslave, divedonkey, divesherpa, tank donkey or pool boy/girl
Thermocline - a point underwater where the temperature drastically changes. Often this is visible as the two temperature "layers" meet
Turtling - the act of a diver who flips over on their back and cannot right themselves
Viz/Visibility - usually measured in feet or meters; how far away you can clearly see underwater.
