Glossary
Sports Official Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential sports official terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key sports official vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in sports official training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Advantage
- Letting play continue after a foul.
- Assignor
- The person who schedules officials.
- Crew
- A team of officials.
- Ejection
- Removing a player or coach.
- Foul
- A rule violation.
- Game report
- A written summary of incidents.
- Line judge
- An official watching lines.
- Mechanics
- Positioning and movement for officials.
- Penalty
- A consequence for a violation.
- Pre-game meeting
- Discussing assignments before a game.
- Rule change
- Updates to rules.
- Rule interpretation
- Applying rules to situations.
- Signal
- A gesture showing a call.
- Sportsmanship
- Fair, respectful behavior.
- Video review
- Using replay to check calls.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Sports Official practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Sports Official training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.