Freestyle snowboarding
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Freestyle snowboarding owes much of its form and content to skateboarding, and many of the maneuvers common to snowboarding exist in skateboarding as well. Though the last decade has seen the trend reverse, with tricks unique to snowboarding cropping up in skating (witness the adaptation of the rodeo in skateboarding by Shaun White ), the great majority of terminology is still borrowed from skateboarding.

• Ollie : The fundamental freestyle maneuver is the ollie; an ollie is essential for most tricks. The ollie is not a hop, as is commonly thought, but a technique which amplifies the power of the legs by exploiting the natural flex of the snowboard. A snowboard is essentially a flat spring. The core has elastic properties and can store and release energy which can be used in an ollie. An ollie is executed by shifting body weight to apply pressure to the tail of the snowboard while simultaneously lifting the nose upward and then releasing the tension from the tail in a jump. It is, however, possible to execute an ollie by using the nose of the board in certain circumstances for a variation in the entry of a trick. Executing an ollie properly requires timing and coordination in a complex series of motions. The ollie was developed and named after Allan "Ollie" Gelfland, a skateboarder who first adapted the ollie to vert and bowl skateboarding in the late 70's and early 80's.

• Frontside vs Backside: This distinction is essential to understanding freestyle snowboarding and is borrowed from surfing, which uses it to distinguish different types of waves. Because a snowboarder stands sideways on the board, turns and movements are asymmetrical; a turn on the heels looks different and requires different movements than a turn on the toes. The frontside/backside dichotomy is useful for understanding terrain and tricks, though it can be confusing. Backside and frontside tricks are opposite between jibbing(rails, boxes,etc.) and jumping. In jibbing, a regular-stance(left foot forward) rider might perform a backside boardslide by jumping on to a rail from the right side, resulting in the rider sliding down the rail with his or her front side facing down the hill. This confuses most people as the rider's front side is facing down the hill, which causes people to believe the trick to be a frontside trick. This is incorrect. In jibbing, the distinction of whether a trick is a frontside trick or a backside trick is from which side of an object the rider enters on, and the rider's stance. In the image labeled 'A backside boardslide,' the rider came from the left side of the jump, riding goofy footed(right foot forward) and spun to his right onto the rail. Because the rider is goofy footed and he entered the rail from the left, this puts the rail behind him, which makes the trick a backside boardslide. All rotations are either backside or frontside, as well; if one jumps and turns looking downhill, the spin is frontside, but jumping and turning one's back to the fall line is a backside spin. When applied to terrain however, the frontside/backside distinction is different; a halfpipe for instance, has frontside and backside walls. If one were to straight run down the middle of the halfpipe, the rationale would be apparent; the rider faces the frontside wall, and approaches on the toes, while backside wall is behind them and is approached on the heels. This applies to rails and boxes as well; the method of approach determines the name of the trick, not the direction of rotation. A boardslide, executed facing up hill, is actually a frontside boardslide, because the obstacle is approached from the frontside while if a rider is facing down the hill while on the box or rail it is backside.

• Switch: This term is adopted from skateboarding and refers to riding a snowboard with the opposite stance (i.e. goofy instead of regular). Because of the twin-directional nature of most snowboards used today, riding switch is nearly the same as riding fakie. (i.e. on a twin tip board a rider will appear goofy when riding one direction and regular when riding the opposite direction). Therefore switch and fakie are commonly used interchangeably with switch being the most often used term. However the term switch is considered a misnomer since it is used as a term for riding backwards, it does does not usually refer to an opposite-stance setup. Riding switch can be considered roughly equivalent to signing one's name with the opposite hand. It requires learning each movement and maneuver over again using the opposite muscles and the opposite side of the brain.

• Fakie: This term (also originating in skateboarding) refers to riding a snowboard in the opposite direction. The term fakie is only commonly used in half pipe maneuvers (when a rider will air out of the pipe vertically and gravity will bring the rider back into the pipe in the opposite direction i.e. 'air to fakie'), or occasionally in rail or box maneuvers when landing in the opposite direction.

An example of the terms fakie and switch being used would be: a boardslide starting in the natural position and landing fakie is referred to 'boardslide to fakie" A boardslide starting fakie and landing fakie is referred to 'switch boardslide' This example also shows the use of the term switch in place of fakie, as it is in most maneuvers.

• Grabs: Grabbing the edge of the board while in mid-air. The four basic grabs are the frontside, more commonly known as an 'indy' (front hand, toe edge or back hand, toe edge), backside (back hand, heel edge or front hand, heel edge), nose and tail grab. Each grab has virtually endless permutations depending on exactly where one places one's hand on the edge and what one does with one's legs (known as "tweaking", "boning" or "poking") while in the air. Some basic tricks adapted from halfpipe skateboarding are mute, melon, frontside, and stalefish. Once you move from the basic tricks that - despite tweaking in different directions - keep the board pretty much flat and going straight ahead, you move onto tricks like the method (bend knees and rotate board from backside so that the base is facing the direction of travel and grab backside with leading hand). Depending on the grab and how it is tweaked the basic method is turned into grasser, Japan air, or taipan. Some of the most stylish freestyle riders out there have their own signature way of doing this stock (basic) trick. Many other tricks are combinations of certain grabs, tweaks and maybe rotations.

• Rotation: Rotation occurs when the board and body turn in relation to the fall line. The smallest possible rotation is a shifty (which isn't technically a rotation at all), and while theoretically limitless, a 1260 (three and a half rotations) is the largest spin currently practicable at the highest level of snowboarding. Rotations must be in multiples of 180 degrees, or in multiples of 90 degrees if onto a rail or box; less or more most often involves falling. 360s, 720s and 1080s involve taking off and landing with the same foot forward, while 180s, 540s, 900s and 1260s involve landing with the opposite foot forward. This is opposite in halfpipe spins where gravity changes your relative direction and therefore a half rotation is landed with the same foot forward as on take off and full rotations are landed with the opposite foot forward.

• Manual (or "press"): A maneuver adapted from skateboarding; while traveling parallel to the fall line of the slope the rider leans over the front "nose" or rear "tail" of the snowboard until it flexes and begins to lift the other end into the air. Which end of the board the rider's weight has been placed on will determine the name of the trick (i.e., nose in the air is a "tail press" while tail in the air is a "nose press"). This maneuver may also be performed on rails or boxes.

• Butter: Originally coined from the phrase "buttering the muffin", a maneuver performed on the surface of the snow or obstacle in which the rider slides perpendicularly to the fall line of the slope while in a nose or tail manual position.