Mahjong Lingo 101: Every Term You Need to Know
by The Mahjong Guild | June 10, 2026 | Learning & Teaching
The first time you sit down at a mahjong table and hear “pung that,” “she’s going for an exposure,” “it’s a wall game,” and “soap” in the same ten-minute stretch, the game can feel like it has its own entire language. It does, a little. American Mahjong has developed a specific vocabulary over nearly a century of play, and learning the words is genuinely part of learning the game.
The good news: the vocabulary is smaller than it sounds, and most of it clicks quickly once you’ve seen each term in context. Here’s a complete plain-language guide to the terms that come up most at the table — organized to build on each other rather than alphabetically, because context helps.
What Are the Three Suits in American Mahjong?
American Mahjong uses three numbered suits, each running from 1 to 9:
- Bams (also called Bamboos) — the green suit, represented by bamboo stalk illustrations. The 1 Bam is the exception: it’s often a colorful bird illustration rather than a single bamboo stalk.
- Craks (also called Characters) — the red suit, featuring Chinese characters for numbers on a tile face that’s usually white or cream.
- Dots (also called Circles) — exactly what the name suggests: tiles with colored circles, numbered by how many circles appear on the face.
These three suits make up the majority of tiles in any hand. When someone says “I need a 6 Crak,” they mean the tile marked with the Chinese character for 6 from the Craks suit. Getting fluent with the suit names is one of the first things that speeds up your play.
What Are Honor Tiles?
Honor tiles are the tiles that don’t belong to a numbered suit. In American Mahjong, these are:
- Winds: East, West, North, South — four of each in a standard set
- Dragons: Red Dragon, Green Dragon, and Soap (White Dragon) — four of each
- Flowers: Eight flower tiles, each numbered 1 through 8 and typically decorated with botanical illustrations
“Soap” is one of those terms that surprises new players — the White Dragon tile earned its nickname because it looks like a plain white tile, reminiscent of a plain bar of soap. Some older players call it the Blank, but Soap is far more common at most tables.
What Does Pung, Kong, and Quint Mean?
These are the names for groups of identical tiles in increasing size:
- Pung — three identical tiles (three 7 Dots, three East Winds, three Red Dragons)
- Kong — four identical tiles
- Quint — five identical tiles (which requires a Joker, since only four of each real tile exists)
When the NMJL card shows a hand pattern with “FFFF” or “DDD” or “NNNN,” those are shorthand notations for kongs and pungs of Flowers, Dragons, and North Winds respectively. Learning to read the card’s notation is a separate skill from learning the terminology — but understanding what pung and kong mean is the foundation.
“Three is a pung. Four is a kong. Five is a quint. The words came from Chinese. The rules are entirely American.”
On the vocabulary of American Mahjong
What Is the Charleston?
The Charleston is the tile-passing ritual that starts every round — and it’s one of the most distinctly American elements of the game. Before drawing from the wall begins, players pass three unwanted tiles in sequence: first to the right, then to the left, then across the table. After the three mandatory passes, there’s an optional courtesy pass — you can pass one to three tiles in any direction, but only if the player you’re passing to also wants to pass.
The Charleston is where a lot of early-round strategy happens. What you pass tells other players something about what you’re keeping. What you receive shapes which hands become viable. And the order of passes matters — many players are more selective about the across pass than the first right pass, because by then you’ve seen more of what’s circulating.
What Is an Exposure?
An exposure is what happens when you claim a discarded tile to complete a group of three or more, then place those tiles face-up on top of your rack where everyone can see them. The exposed tiles stay visible for the rest of the round — they can’t be returned to your hand or concealed. This is a significant moment in any round, because it tells the table part of your hand. Experienced players adjust their discards based on what they can see in others’ exposures.
Making an exposure commits you to the hand you’ve shown. If you’ve exposed a pung of 6 Craks, you can’t pivot to a hand that doesn’t use those tiles. This is why experienced players think carefully before claiming any discard: once you expose, you’ve announced your direction to the table.
What Is a Dead Hand?
A dead hand is a hand that’s been disqualified from winning — most commonly because the player claimed a tile incorrectly, called Mahjong when their hand wasn’t valid, or made an exposure that doesn’t match any valid hand on the NMJL card. A player with a dead hand continues to play to the end of the round but cannot win, and other players know it.
Dead hands can also be called by other players — if you believe someone has made an illegal exposure or has tiles that can’t form any valid hand, you can declare their hand dead. The risk: if you call it incorrectly, your own hand becomes dead as the penalty.
What Is a Wall Game?
A wall game occurs when all tiles in the wall have been drawn and no one has called Mahjong. The round ends as a draw — no one wins, no one pays. Play restarts. Wall games happen when the table is playing defensively, when the tile distribution is particularly unhelpful, or simply when no one’s hand comes together before the wall runs out. They’re more common in experienced groups than new ones.
What Does “Concealed” Mean on the NMJL Card?
A concealed hand is a hand that must be completed without making any exposures. You build it entirely through draws from the wall — every tile in your winning hand was drawn, not claimed. Concealed hands are marked on the NMJL card (often with a “C” notation or a specific section) and are typically worth more points because they’re genuinely harder to build. Playing for a concealed hand means never claiming a discard, no matter how tempting, which requires patience and discipline.
There’s also something strategically valuable about a concealed hand: no one at the table can see any of your tiles until you call Mahjong. You reveal nothing about your direction until the moment you win.
For anyone in the early stages of learning, the Learning & Teaching section of The Mahjong Guild has a lot more where this came from — rule clarifications, strategy foundations, and a community of players who have answered every question you’re about to have.
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