54 terms · four categories

Glossary

If a term needs explaining, it is explained here once and used plainly everywhere else. The site's visible record marks are reserved for unknown values.

31 terms

Game

Backdoor: Nominate a pawn beside your target, promise the target they're safe, then use the veto to make it stick so the target never gets to play for their own life. Invented on air in week 5, 2004. Devised by Marvin Latimer, executed and named by Nakomis Dedmon: as HOH she nominated two of her own alliance, so the nominees would pick allies to play veto and all six veto players ended up on her side. She called it the Six Finger Plan, and the six is the point of the name. Jase Wirey never played in that veto, was named as the replacement, and went out 6-1. Who first said backdoor is not on record; Goblin note
The polite word for it
Block Buster: Three nominees, one saves themselves in a live comp before the vote. Not a BB28 invention: it began as BB26's AI Arena (AINSLEY's, 7 weeks, she closed it herself at the top 9), was renamed in BB27 (10 weeks, ended on the eve of the first double eviction), and Julie has called it permanent; Goblin note
An AI built this and nobody says so out loud
Coaster: The passive one. Little effect on the game, or attached to a stronger player for the ride, and unlike a floater they typically stay with a single alliance the whole way. This is what most people mean when they say floater; Goblin note
Doing nothing, correctly, for ninety days
Comp beast: A houseguest who keeps winning competitions. An enviable position that becomes a death sentence the first week they lose one; Goblin note
Winning is how you tell everybody where to aim
Coup d'État: Also called the Wizard Power. The holder overrides the HOH's nominations at the ceremony and names their own. Sources contradict each other badly on which seasons and holders, mixing up BB11 and BB12, so the specifics here are deliberately thin. Like any unannounced twist there's no knowing whether it returns – but the goblin doubts it: the Coin of Destiny covers the same dethrone-the-HOH ground and is already confirmed in this season's capsule pool; Goblin note
The HOH keeps the title, the room, and the basket: everything but the decision
Double Eviction: Two HGs leave in one live hour. Straight after the normal eviction the house plays a full week at speed: HOH comp, nominations, veto, veto ceremony and a second eviction, all inside the broadcast. The highest-variance hour of the season; Goblin note
A week compressed until it breaks. The goblin takes notes standing up
DR: Diary Room. Where HGs talk to production; Goblin note
Directed Responses, Delusion Refinement
Finale / F2: The last two standing face a jury of the HGs they evicted, who vote for a winner. Getting there runs through a three-part final HOH: the winner of the last part chooses which of the other two to sit beside. That choice is where goats get selected; Goblin note
Ninety days of lying, adjudicated by the people you lied to
Floater: Contested, and the argument is the interesting part. Strictly it is an active strategy: join no alliance, or join several with loyalty to none, and deliberately work opposing sides so the leaders and gamers remove each other. Jun Song won BB4 playing exactly this. In casual use it now means a player who does nothing, which is a coaster. Rachel Reilly's BB12 HOH line, "Floaters, you better grab a life vest!", is widely credited with collapsing the two, and the show still posts it; Goblin note
A real strategy that lost a fight with a catchphrase
Goat: Imported from Survivor, not native here. A finalist you take because they cannot win: no path with the jury, so sitting beside them improves your odds. The term spread through a Survivor Sucks forum thread in that show's early days, where the original framing was blunt, "someone who was actively willing to lose to you." Inside Survivor traces the sense back further still, possibly to Charlie Brown. It travelled to BB because the F2 jury vote works the same way; Goblin note
Four letters that mean either the worst finalist available or the greatest of all time, depending entirely on capitalisation. Reality television managed to produce both
Have-nots: Comp losers on cold showers, terrible beds and slop. How many there are changes week to week. The food rules are looser than the reputation: slop plus a long list of approved condiments, and historically two extra foods chosen by public vote, usually picked to be unappetising enough that they ate the slop anyway. The broadcast has quietly dropped them, so they run on the feeds every week and barely appear in the episodes; Goblin note
Whoever is currently eating correctly
HG: Houseguest. Universal feed shorthand; Goblin note
Hairless Goblin. He has never clarified and will not be taking questions
Hinky vote: A vote that does not match the count anybody expected – one stray ballot in an eviction everyone had already worked out. Feeder dialect, not the show's: nothing on air calls a vote hinky. The vote itself changes little; what follows is the event, because a house that cannot locate one ballot starts auditing everybody, and whoever cast it has about an hour to decide between owning it and letting somebody else wear it; Goblin note
Twelve people become detectives. At least one of them already knows
HOH: Head of Household. Wins the week, nominates three, gets the good bedroom and a music basket; Goblin note
Highest Occupant, Hunted. The chair is a target with a bed attached
JANKIE: Junior Artificial Neurokinetic Intelligence Entity. AINSLEY's protégé and the barker of Jankie World. See Household Appliances; Goblin note
Friend
Jury: Evicted HGs from a set point in the season onward, sequestered away from the outside world, who return at the finale to pick the winner. "Jury management" is the art of getting evicted by somebody without them enjoying it; Goblin note
The only people in this game whose vote is cast after they have stopped being able to win
Jury management: Playing the last stretch of the season with one eye on the people already evicted, because they are the ones who hand over the money. It means taking your shot in a way the target can respect, saying so to their face rather than letting them work it out in the jury house, and never humiliating somebody whose vote you need in three weeks. The art of getting evicted by somebody without them enjoying it; Goblin note
Every knife in the last month arrives with an apology attached, and the apology is the part that gets counted
Mist: To be talked out of your own best interest by somebody you trust, and to feel fine about it at the time. Named for Dan Gheesling, whose persuasion was effective enough that the fandom made it a weather condition. The word set in during his second season, BB14, when the people he had worked on started using it about themselves. Still in active use; Goblin note
A verb made out of one man. The goblin considers this the highest honour the fandom can give
OTB: On The Block. Nominated, and not yet saved; Goblin note
Openly Traded, Briefly. The moment an HG goes up they stop being a player and start being currency
Pandora's Box: A door marked with a question mark inside the HOH room. Opening it releases something bad on the house and hands the HOH something good, per the myth. Long-running twist, used heavily in some seasons. By design, nobody knows it's in play until production springs it – no BB28 sighting yet, and there is no way to know one isn't coming; Goblin note
A twist that asks the greediest person in the building to make a decision for everybody
Pawn: A likeable nominee at low risk, put up to force votes onto the real target; Goblin note
A word an HG uses about themselves roughly one week before being evicted
POV / Veto: Power of Veto. Win it, save yourself or a friend off the block. Using it forces the HOH to name a replacement, so it moves the target rather than removing one; Goblin note
Plastic Of Value. A necklace decides who goes home. He respects the economy of it
Renom: The replacement nominee, and the act of naming one. The veto comes off the block with somebody on it, the seat it emptied has to be filled before the vote, and the renom is whoever the HOH puts there. Feeders use it as both noun and verb. This is the moment a pawn finds out whether the pawn story was ever true; Goblin note
The chair is never left empty. Somebody is always found for it
Self-eviction: Leaving the game by choice instead of by vote – usually called walking or quitting by feeders, so "X walked" means X left on their own, never that X survived. Distinct from expulsion, where production removes a houseguest for breaking a rule. Both skip the vote entirely, which is why an eviction night can arrive with the block already settled. Reasons are typically medical, family, or mental health, and the show has generally let people go quietly rather than making a segment of it; Goblin note
The one exit nobody else gets a say in. The goblin notes, without further comment, that it is also the only move in this house that cannot be blocked, bought, or vetoed
Showmance: A romance formed inside the house, which may be real, performed for camera time, or a bit of both. Usually a strategic liability either way, since two people who vote together are one target with two bodies. Big Brother is where it went mainstream: Will Kirby used it on BB2 in 2001 and it spread across the reality landscape from there, Survivor and The Challenge and Amazing Race all carrying it now. The theatre had the word first. The man who put it on television turned up in this season's premiere; Goblin note
Two HGs deciding to be evicted as a set
Slop: The have-not food. A bland oat-based mixture. In BB9 (2008), hypoglycemic houseguest Amanda Hansen passed out and then had a seizure on the live feeds, having told the Diary Room she needed sugar badly; houseguest Josh pushed the emergency button. Allison Nichols was treated for a severe allergic reaction the same day. Both were medically cleared, and both chose to go back in; Goblin note
Perfectly good food, and the goblin will hear no complaints about it. He notes only, and without further comment, that the emergency button was pushed by a houseguest rather than by the control room
Split house: A format that divides the house into two groups who live, compete and vote apart, each side running its own HOH, nominations and veto, so two people can be evicted on the same night out of two separate games. Format history rather than this season: the clearest US run was BB24's seventh week, split into Big BroChella and Dyre Fest, each side voting only within its own group – Jasmine Davis and Joseph Abdin both left on Day 51. BB28 has never used the mechanism. When this house splits, it splits socially; Goblin note
Twice the house and half the information, which is the goblin's preferred ratio
Veto Ceremony: The meeting where the veto holder decides whether to use it. If they do, the HOH names a replacement on the spot, so the block never shrinks: somebody comes down and somebody else goes up. Held Mondays this season. Distinct from the noms ceremony (Fri) and eviction night (Thu); Goblin note
Nobody comes off this block without somebody else going onto it. The HGs forget this every single week
The Crossovers: A name the five-person group (Dee, Devens, Kamu, Chuk, Haley) gives itself on the July 12 broadcast, fourteen minutes after the same five lock in "Red Corner" in the same episode. Whether it is a rename, a second overlapping group, or an artefact of the edit is not settled here; Goblin note
Two names inside a quarter of an hour. One of them is not going to survive the summer
Red Corner: Alliance name locked in on the July 12 broadcast, after Kamu points out that champions fight out of the red corner in MMA. Used two ways in the same episode: on the feeds for the trio (Haley, Chuk, Kamu), on air for a five that adds Dee and Devens. See Chogmu for the trio; Goblin note
Named themselves after the corner champions come out of, which is a lot of confidence for week one
Time Capsule: A weekly fan vote sends one HG to gamble: win a power or eat a punishment; Goblin note
A vote that mails weapons to whoever got the most airtime

19 terms

Feeds

Anipals: The adoptable shelter animals shown during comps and ceremonies, not on every cut. A routine cut gets the logo and streaks instead, so the animals mean something structural is happening. They come from Rancho Coastal Humane Society in Encinitas, whose rooms are named the Kittery, the Puppy Kennel and the Rabbitat. Debut nights produce real adoptions; Goblin note
Colleagues. Left on shift long after the job has finished, because nobody remembers they are still on. Everyone else in this house is playing a game for money. The prospective pets are the only ones on screen actually trying to accomplish something
BBAD: Big Brother: After Dark. Dead. The overnight feed broadcast ran from July 2007 to Sept 23, 2019, and never returned. CBS never gave a reason. The theory that circulates blames the Viacom merger and what it did to Pop TV, and a theory is all it has ever been. The term survives anyway, and Reality Kingdom on YouTube now holds the overnight slot; Goblin note
The only hours worth the electricity. A corporate reorganisation took them and the goblin has forgiven nobody
Button Boys: The staffers actually watching the feeds, who cut the instant an HG sings something copyrighted or names somebody who never signed a release; Goblin note
Knows the term. Declines to use it. Considers "Skippy" the only civilised name for the office
Cam talk: An HG speaking directly into a camera. Usually one person alone, though it happens in groups too. Not the Diary Room: the DR is talking to production, cam talk is talking to the outside. There are really two audiences for it, family watching at home and the feeders, and which one they're addressing is usually obvious within a sentence; Goblin note
The only door in that house that opens outward. And this season it opens onto a voting booth, because the Time Capsule is decided by the people on the other side of the lens
(The) Edit: How the episodes build a story out of the week's footage, and the deepest grievance in feeder culture. You watch a thing happen, then watch the episode tell it differently: conversations trimmed until they mean something else, statements quietly left out, players recast as masterminds or villains. Commentator Taran Armstrong has the useful framing: the feeds work as a safeguard, and watching them teaches you how shows without feeds might be lying to you; Goblin note
Fiction, assembled out of documentary footage
Fake houseguest: A person production presents as cast who never officially joins the game: no placement, no jury seat, no line on the roster. The franchise has its own word for it – the BB wiki keeps a Fake Housemate/Secret House Guest category, and TV Guide used the literal phrase for Anthony Scaramucci on Celebrity BB2, whose contestant row reads "Fake Houseguest (Day 6)" where every other name has a number. He was in there planting clues for a veto competition. BB28 ran one on premiere night: Rachel Reilly arrived as a prospective returning entrant, played the first HOH sequence, and was written out by the raptor; Goblin note
A houseguest-shaped object. No placement, no jury, no regrets
Feeds: The 24/7 live cameras. The platform's own promo copy puts it at 94 HD cameras and 113 microphones, the same figure it has run for several seasons, and the quad shows you four of them at a time. Where the truth lives, days before the episodes admit it; Goblin note
The window. It was here first, and you are only ever seeing four ninety-fourths of it
Fish: The old hold screen: an aquarium the feeds cut away to, which gave feeders a verb for it. BB28 has no fish. The anipals and the logo screen hold that slot now. The word survives loosely in the fandom regardless, which is why it keeps turning up in glossaries written by people who stopped watching; Goblin note
Replaced by animals with names, a shelter, and something to gain. A promotion for everyone involved
Flash Back: The feeds feature that let a subscriber rewind to any moment earlier in the season, which made the feeds an archive rather than a broadcast. Removed in July 2024, when Paramount+ cut Flashback and the archives together and made the feeds live-only. No reason was ever given. The community's workaround is what it has always been: somebody was recording; Goblin note
The single most goblin-shaped feature ever shipped by a television network
Flirtmance: The stage before a showmance, which is where most of them end. Flirting on camera, cuddling adjacency, plausible deniability intact – the feeds community tracks these as their own category because a flirtmance can pay strategic rent for weeks without either player owing the other anything. May graduate into a showmance; usually doesn't; Goblin note
Courtship with an exit clause
Frankenbite: Soundbite plus Frankenstein. A quote that sounds like one continuous sentence but was stitched from separate recordings, sometimes different days and different subjects, occasionally down to fragments of words. There is a real spectrum here: cutting "um" and false starts is universal and harmless, and assembling a sentence nobody ever said is not the same act; Goblin note
A sentence that was never said, in a voice that definitely said it
Hamsters: The HGs, per Hamsterwatch. Its tagline is "It's about watching hamsters: who's doing what and why." The site footer runs genuine hamster care advice as a joke: "Position the habitat of your hamster somewhere light and airy." Its own disclaimer is the honest one: "it's what I catch and/or what interests me"; Goblin note
Correct, and Hamsterwatch got there first. The goblin defers on this one and will not be elaborating
Lockdown: One of the most useful tells on the feeds. Production locks the HGs somewhere so crew can work elsewhere. Indoor lockdown means the backyard is off limits and the screens go up, which means something is being built out there. Outdoor lockdown means they need the house. HOH lockdown herds everyone into one room, and often precedes the Thursday live show; Goblin note
When they lock the door, look at which door
Memory Wall: The wall of houseguest photos, and the show's scoreboard: a portrait greys out when its owner is evicted, so the room tells you the state of the game before anyone in it speaks. It used to run on keys, turned one at a time by the HOH at the nomination ceremony, the last faces left being the nominees; Goblin note
The only honest surface in the house
Mr. B: Not feeder dialect: one houseguest's coinage that stuck. Felicia Cannon named the Voice of God and then simply talked to him, addressing requests directly at the ceiling: "Okay, Mr. B, you know, I ain't got no more milk." He honoured them. She later called it her favourite part of the season; Goblin note
The correct way to handle a landlord: politely, by name, and relentlessly
Skippy: The fan name for whoever cuts the feeds. Not a real credited person: the cuts land so often that feeders invented an operator to blame. A staple of the fandom; Goblin note
The nemesis. Every WBRB is a round lost to Skippy
Trivia: Obsolete, and included as a fossil. Per a BB13-era (2011) glossary, this was what the feeds showed while a competition was running, in the slot the anipals and the logo screen hold today. Confirmed dead: an active feeder reviewing this page didn't recognise the term at all, which is a better test of currency than any article; Goblin note
A screen so boring it got a name, then got replaced by dogs, and now nobody remembers it had a name
Voice of God / VOG: The production voice that speaks into the house. Season 1 had various producers making announcements; from season 2 they settled on one consistent voice so the language the HGs heard never changed. That voice is Don Wollman, asked in season 2 to take it permanently; Goblin note
The landlord's intercom. Same voice for twenty-five years and it has never once said anything kind, with exactly one documented exception (see Mr. B)
WBRB: "We'll Be Right Back." Feeds have cut to a hold screen. Which screen is the tell: the BB logo over animated streaks is a routine cut, while the anipals mean a comp or ceremony is underway. Same blackout, very different information. The tell is not airtight: the animals often stay up long after the comp has ended, until somebody in the booth notices. Each season draws its own hold screen, and this one leaves the words off, so the acronym has outlived the sentence it came from; Goblin note
Witnessed, But Refused Broadcast. Nothing is ever cut away from because nothing happened. And since that screen is drawn fresh every season, somebody sat in a room this year and decided the promise was the part they could do without

3 terms

This site

Confirmed: Recorded as fact in the wired source.
Reported / inferred: Reported or inferred material, kept distinct from fact.
Unknown: The authorized record does not supply a value.

1 term

Lore

Chogmu: Feeder shorthand for the trio inside Red Corner: Chuk, Haley (Thog), Kamu. Coined by live-feed watchers, not by the house, so a busy feed thread could refer to them in one word. It names the trio specifically, never the wider five; Goblin note
Three houseguests compressed into one word because saying all three was costing the fandom time it did not have