American Mahjong Glossary

Glossary

American mahjong has its own vocabulary, and several words mean something different here than they do in Asian variants. Start typing to filter — most terms below are the ones beginners hear at the table without explanation.

Bam: Short for bamboo, one of the three suits. The 1 Bam is the bird tile. Always plural in speech: “I need two bams.”
Crak: Also: crack, characterOne of the three suits, marked with a numeral above and the character for ten thousand below.
Charleston: The signature mechanicThe mandatory opening exchange: three tiles right, three across, three left, all passed simultaneously.
Concealed hand: Marked “C” on the cardA hand that may not use any exposures. Every tile must come off the wall. These print at higher values.
Courtesy pass: An optional exchange of up to three tiles between opposite players after the Charleston. Either player may decline.
Blind pass: Charleston onlyA way to meet the three-tile requirement on the final pass of a Charleston when your own hand has nothing to spare: pass along one to three tiles you just received, face down, without looking. Allowed only on the last pass of each Charleston — the left pass that ends the first, and the right pass that ends the second. You may never blind-pass a joker.
Curtsy: The small push that slides each built wall toward the center before the deal. Walls are curtsied around the table so the dealer can break theirs and dealing begins.
Dead hand: A hand that can no longer win — usually because of an illegal call, a wrong exposure, or a misdeclared Mah Jongg. You sit out the rest of the hand.
Live & dead tile: A discard stays “live” — claimable by a call — until the next player draws. Once that player takes their tile, the discard is “dead” and can no longer be claimed. Watch the rack: a tile you wanted is gone the moment the turn moves on.
East seat: The dealer’s seat for a hand. At the start, everyone rolls; the highest roll takes East and deals first. After that the deal rotates around the table each hand.
Exposure: A completed group placed face up on top of your rack after calling a discard. Exposures are public information and remove tiles from play.
Calling: Saying “Call” (or “Take it”) the instant a discard completes a group or your winning hand, then exposing the finished set. Only the most recently discarded tile can be claimed, and only by a hand that may legally use it.
Flower: One of eight interchangeable flower tiles. In American mahjong flowers are ordinary tiles used inside hands, not bonuses drawn and replaced.
Joker: One of eight wild tiles. Usable only inside groups of three or more, never for a single or a pair, and never passed in the Charleston.
Kong: Four identical tiles. Because the set holds only four of each, a kong can be built without a joker.
Mah Jongg: Also: mahj, mahjongThe declaration made when your fourteen tiles match a card line exactly. Also the name of the completed hand.
NEWS: Card shorthand for one each of North, East, West and South. Sometimes printed as a single group; sometimes the winds are split across groups.
Group of singles: A card line made of non-matching tiles shown together, such as 2025 or NEWS. Despite looking like pungs on the card, these are single-tile groups: they cannot be called for and cannot use jokers.
Matching Dragons: On the cardWhen a hand calls for a “matching” dragon, it means the dragon must share the suit you are building in: Red goes with craks, Green with bams, and Soap (white) with dots. The card prints this so a line stays inside one suit family.
East = Even: Card shorthandA memory aid for which winds pair with which numbers on the card. East and West go with even numbers; North and South go with odd numbers. That is why 2468 hands use E/W and 13579 hands use N/S.
Pung: Three identical tiles. The basic building block of most hands on the card.
Quint: Five of a kind. Since only four copies of each tile exist, a quint always requires at least one joker.
Rack: The standing frame that holds your tiles upright, facing you. Exposed groups sit on the top ledge. Racks are why American players never hold tiles in hand.
Sextet: Six identical tiles — four naturals plus two jokers, or the like. Appears in the harder high-value hands.
Single: A lone tile required by a hand, rather than part of a group. A joker can never substitute for a single.
Soap: Also: white dragonThe blank white dragon tile. Written as 0 in card notation. The nickname is universal in American play.
Wall: The four stacks of face-down tiles forming a square in the middle of the table. Each player builds nineteen stacks, two tiles high.
Wall game: Also: a drawA hand in which the wall runs out before anyone declares. Nobody pays; the tiles are shuffled and redealt.
Year hand: A hand built around the digits of the current calendar year. The only section of the card rewritten completely every year.

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