You may hear different BDSM terms and wonder about their meaning.
For those new to the kink and fetish community, or even those who have been involved for a long time, certain BDSM terms may be new to you.
This handy list of BDSM terms will help you sort out the conversations and writeups around you.
38 BDSM Terms and Their Meanings
1. Aftercare
After a BDSM experience, aftercare is an important time where you and your partner relax and take care of each other physically and psychologically. You take care of any wounds or pain. You connect through touch. You rest. You clean up. You revive with fluids and some protein or fruits.
Many fetish lovers experience a crash after the play scene and need emotional support while they ride that out and restore their mood to stable.
Read: BDSM Aftercare: What’s It All About?
2. BDSM
BDSM stands for “bondage and disciple, sadism and masochism” or “bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism” depending who you ask. It encompasses the variety of ways kinky people explore power exchanges in sexual encounters and relationships.
3. BDSM Play
This BDSM term refers to any kind of kinky sexual expression or event, such as spanking, pony play fetish, body partialism, sensory play, dominance and submission, leather scenes, and any others.
Read: BDSM Ideas: The BIG List of BDSM Play
4. BDSM Furniture
Sometimes called bondage furniture or dungeon furniture, BDSM furniture is equipment specifically designed for, or retrofitted to be used in bondage and other kinds of BDSM play. These could include cages, spanking benches, St. Andrew crosses, etc.
5. BDSM Gear
BDSM gear is any of the paraphernalia we use to facilitate play. This could be nipple clamps, ankle cuffs, whips, gags, spreader bars, puppy masks, diapers, dildos, and more.
Read: Essential Femdom Toys and Gear
6. BDSM Training
BDSM is imaginative, complex, and full of rules. It also draws considerably on role play. Additionally, each dominant and submissive lover has unique needs and expectations.
BDSM training is a BDSM term that means learning the art of dominance and submission. A submissive is trained to please their dominant and learns to do things the way they are expected to.
Read: BDSM Training: A Guide for Beginners
7. Bondage
Bondage as a BDSM term is the practice of consensually binding or restraining a partner for erotic or psychological pleasure.
8. Bottom
This BDSM term refers to the submissive partner, the one who receives spanking, bondage, humiliation, etc. In gay men’s circles, you’ll hear bottom in reference to the partner who enjoys receiving penetration anally.
Read: Topping from the Bottom: What It Means
9. Collaring
Collaring is not simply wearing a collar for bondage purposes. Collaring is symbolic of submission and obedience, and collaring rituals are ceremonial and about relationship and ownership in the context of a BDSM relationship.
10. Consent
Consent is the cornerstone of BDSM. All BDSM must be voluntary and consensual. Consent means someone understands what something entails, what the risks are, what it means, and wants to participate. Consent means there has been no manipulation or coercion.
Read: Should Sexual Consent be Implied or Expressed?
11. Consensual Non-Consent
This BDSM term is important. When we play with various kinds of power exchange, we might explore fantasies that are violent or include the use of force. Rape fantasies or forced feminization fantasies are two examples. While we are role playing a fantasy that involves force, we have consented to the people involved, the timing and the play implicated in the fantasy.
Read: CNC Kink: 10 Examples of Consensual Non-Consent Play
12. Contract
BDSM contracts detail the nitty gritty and helps couples communicate their fantasies and their limits. It spells out the kinds of activities and relationship they agree to.
13. Discipline
Discipline as a BDSM term refers to the practice of setting rules that a submissive is expected to obey. When they don’t obey those rules, they may receive instructions, corrections, or punishments.
Read: Submissive Rules and Tasks for Subs
14. Domination and Submission
Domination and submission is the age old dance between lovers. As a BDSM term it refers to the power exchange relationship where one partner is dominant and calls the shots, and the other is submissive or obedient and follows along.
15. Dom Drop
Dom drop is also known as top drop. It is the change in mood or physical energy after an intense BDSM experience. Understanding this mood can help lovers design aftercare and understand why they feel low.
Read: Dom Drop Care for BDSM Dominants
16. Dungeon
A dungeon is a BDSM playroom.
17. Edge Play
Edge play is a BDSM term that describes extremes of various fetishes that want to play close to the edge. For example, erotic asphyxiation or knife play may court danger because edge play is a turn on.
Read: Edge Play: Taking BDSM too Far?
18. Fetish
A fetish was originally an inanimate object that was revered because it was believed to inhabit a spirit. As a BDSM term, it means sexual gratification from objects rather than a person. For example, someone might have a fetish for leather or for medical equipment. The words were the same because that object held intense power.
The word “fetish” in modern times is more or less interchangeable with kink and means diverse sexual interests. A person could have a fetish for feet, for saliva, for the smell of vinyl, for accidents, or for latex, to name a few.
Read: The BIG List of Kinks: 120+ Fetishes Explained
19. Hard Limits
Hard limits are non-negotiable boundaries where a person does not give consent to play.
Read: BDSM Limits and Boundaries to Discuss
20. Masochism
Masochism is a BDSM term that describes when someone takes sexual and psychological pleasure from pain or humiliation.
21. Munch
A BDSM munch is a get together with other people in the BDSM community. It is a chance to meet, converse, eat lunch together, and form connections. It is not about dating.
Read: The BDSM Munch: Everything You Need to Know
22. Play Party
A play party is a social event where people drink, dance, talk, and participate in BDSM and fetish experiences.
23. Power Exchange
Power exchange is what happens between lovers who are dominant and submissive, during bondage, sadomasochism, and bondage and discipline. It is about the dom taking control and the submissive consenting to give up authority.
Read: BDSM Roles: 33 Dominant and Submissive Roles
24. Risk Aware
Risk aware is a BDSM term that stresses that consent is not true unless it is informed consent. Someone must be risk aware about the kind of play they engage in to truly consent to it.
25. Consensual Kink (RACK)
Risk aware consensual kink means that someone understands what they are doing, knows the risks, desires that activity, and consents to it.
Read: RACK, PRICK, and Other BDSM Safety Protocols
26. Roleplay
Role play is simply acting, playing the part of someone else or staging a different circumstance. As a BDSM term, it refers to the practice of playing roles for sexual excitement.
BDSM roleplay is commonly about various power exchange situations, such as doctor and patient, goddess and worshipper, cop and criminal.
Read: Sexual Roleplay: A Guide for Roleplay Beginners
27. Sadism
Sadism is the BDSM term that describes when someone experiences sexual and psychological pleasure from administering pain.
Read: Sadomasochism: Sadism and Masochism in BDSM
28. Safe, Sane, and Consensual (SSC)
This acronym refers to kink practices that are safely performed with full consent.
29. Safe Word
A safe word or sometimes a safe gesture is a code between lovers that means activity will stop if the word is spoken or symbol is gestured.
Read: Safe Words: A Guide to Choosing and Using Them
30. Scene
A BDSM scene is an event or experience of play.
31. Soft Limits
Soft limits are boundaries that are in place but are flexible. They may be open to change as the relationship grows closer or as the person finds deeper trust. They may change because a person develops a curiosity as they explore their nature.
Read: How to Build Trust in Your Kinky Relationships
32. Submissive
In a power exchange relationship, the submissive is the passive party or the one who gives sexual control to the dominant lover.
Read: Why BDSM Submission is So Satisfying
33. Sub Drop
After a BDSM scene, especially those that are painful or psychologically intense, a submissive often experiences a lowered mood and physical energy loss that we call sub drop.
Because endorphins and neurotransmitters literally wane after rushing through a body in an intense experience, this is a physiological state that requires rest, relaxation, comfort, refreshment, and touching.
Read: Sub Drop Care for BDSM Submissives
34. Subspace
Subspace is the frame of mind that is pleasurable, secure, and may feel “high” or otherwise altered, from endorphins and hormone changes that take place during intense experiences of pain.
35. Switch
When a person can be both dominant and submissive, we call them a switch.
Read: Switching from Dominant to Submissive
36. Top
A top is the dominant lover in a dominant and submissive relationship.
Topping from the Bottom
When a submissive starts making demands or manipulating or otherwise trying to take control, this is called topping from the bottom.
37. Total Power Exchange (TPE)
Total power exchange is a BDSM term that means in a power exchange relationship, authority is given to the dominant lover, not just in the bedroom but in all aspects of the relationship.
Read: BDSM and Total Power Exchange Relationships
38. Vanilla
Vanilla as a BDSM term simply refers to sexual practices that are not kinky. Regular or basic sex is vanilla sex.
Read: Vanilla Sex in BDSM Relationships
What BDSM terms would you add to this list? Please share!
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