John Bramson

Hello all, when I started lurking on bike forums I noticed that there were many terms or abbreviations that people use. It admittedly took me awhile to figure out what most of these meant, so I thought I should make a post explaining the ones I can remember off the top of my head and inviting everyone to contribute.

BF - Bike Forums
LBS - Local Bike Store
OP - Original Poster
N + 1 - N means your current fleet of bikes & +1 means that you should add a bike to your fleet while still keeping all the rest.
+1 - This means that a person agrees with whatever is said. Normally they will quote the reply that they agree with.
MHR - Maximum heart rate
RHR - Resting heart rate
BPM - Beats per minute
ERD - Effective rim diameter
OLD - Over locknut dimension
FD - Front Derailleur
RD - Rear Derailleur
FH - Freehub
FW - Freewheel
BB - Bottom Bracket
TT - Top Tube or Time Trial
ST - Seat Tube
CTC - Center To Center (usually referring to the center of the crank to the center of the top tube)
CTT - Center To Top (usually referring to center of the crank to the top of the seat tube
FG - Fixed Gear (not fixie)
SS - Single Speed
JIS - Japanese Industrial Standards (a common cross head screw used on Shimano and other derailleurs)
NJS - Nihon Jitensha Shinkōkai (or the Japanese Keirin Association they standardize track bike parts in Japan for keirin/track betting races and used to oversee the races)
BSO - Bicycle Shaped Object (low end stuff from big box stores and non-bicycle online retailers)
NDS - Non-Drive Side (the side of the bike which doesn't have a chain. chainring(s), cog(s) and possibly derailleur(s) on it)
DS - Drive Side (the other side which has all that stuff typically on most bikes it is the right side)
FTP - Functional Threshold Power and is effectively a measure of the power you can hold for an hour, measured in watts
TSS. - Training Stress Score (TSS) is a composite number that takes into account the duration and intensity of a workout to arrive at a single estimate of the overall training load and physiological stress created by that training session
VOM - V O2 Max
And a few other specific to training
KOM. - King of the Mountain (Stava app)
PR - Personal Record (Strava app)
I B T L - In before the lock
FIFY - fixed it for you (another general message board abbreviation; used when quoting someone and changing a part of the quote, usually for comedic purposes)
IGH - internally geared hub
DF - diamond frame (the classic bike frame consisting of two adjacent triangles when viewed from the side)
CF - carbon fiber
bent - recumbent bicycle
LMGTFY - "Let me Google that for you" (when someone posts a question they could easily look up themselves).
TBDMN - Too bad didn't make the news


Please let me know of any I missed, I'm sure there are quite a few .


List of contributors (this may be outdated, sorry) - veganbikes, 79pmooney, dedhed, rsbob, Reynolds, subgrade, Wildwood, Rolla, mcours2006, & Happy Feet.

veganbikes

I will bite because I want to finish listening to this Don Caballero album before I hit the sack.

FD - Front Derailleur
RD - Rear Derailleur
FH - Freehub
FW - Freewheel
BB - Bottom Bracket
TT - Top Tube or Time Trial
ST - Seat Tube
CTC - Center To Center (usually referring to the center of the crank to the center of the top tube)
CTT - Center To Top (usually referring to center of the crank to the top of the seat tube
FG - Fixed Gear (not fixie)
SS - Single Speed
JIS - Japanese Industrial Standards (a common cross head screw used on Shimano and other derailleurs)
NJS - Nihon Jitensha Shinkōkai (or the Japanese Keirin Association they standardize track bike parts in Japan for keirin/track betting races and used to oversee the races)
BSO - Bicycle Shaped Object (low end stuff from big box stores and non-bicycle online retailers)
NDS - Non-Drive Side (the side of the bike which doesn't have a chain. chainring(s), cog(s) and possibly derailleur(s) on it)
DS - Drive Side (the other side which has all that stuff typically on most bikes it is the right side)

Also some other useful notes

1. If you see a dormant thread that has been dormant for a few months and you have nothing to of great importance to add, just let it go and find a recent active thread or if need be start a new one.
2. If you only have a single question to ask and plan on not sticking around and being an active member, please use Yahoo! Answer, Googles, Ask Jeeves, DuckDuckGo, AltaVista, Meta Crawler or one of the many other search engines out there.
3. Don't try to sneakily advertise your products from overseas or get free advice from people for your business, pay people to do focus groups like everyone else or set up a table outside and hand out free samples.
4. If you want to post pictures, truly join the forum and be active in it and you will soon be able to post pics or just see RULE #2
5. Please if you aren't going to follow the rules of bicycle photos at the very very very least take at least one photo of the drive side of the bike the other side isn't that exciting unless completely different paint or something amazing that you cannot show on the drive side.

79pmooney

There are the bike abbreviations. To name a few

HS - headset
BB - bottom bracket (this applies to both the frame shell and the bearing assembly inside)
SP - seatpost
HB - handlebars

frame parts
TT - top tube
HT - head tube
DT - down tube
ST - seat tube
CS - chainstay
SS - seatstay
WB - wheelbase

There are more but that's a start

Eidt: veganbikes beat me!

and (how could I forget)
FG - fix gear

Darth Lefty 

Once you finish up the terms you’ll have to do the conditions

jpescatore

You may run into many quotes of the form "Remember Rule #5 - HTFU"

The Rules can be found here and are essentially a list of cycling guidelines to follow if you want to emulate the people who wrote the rules, who tend to enjoy emulating professional bike racers. If you care about sock height, whether sunglasses go over or under helmet straps or the color of shorts, have at it.

BTW, HTFU is a more modern variant of the "Buckle Down, Winsocki" that my father would say to me when I whined about something. For a group bicycling weekend, I had T shirts made with a graphic and HTFU under it and told everyone it stood for Happy Times, Fun Unlimited.

YMMV

dedhed

**** - In before the lock
Interesting it gets censored. I B T L

John Bramson

Thank you all who posted helping me out, also rsbob sent me a private message with all of these terms:

FTP - Functional Threshold Power and is effectively a measure of the power you can hold for an hour, measured in watts
TSS. - Training Stress Score (TSS) is a composite number that takes into account the duration and intensity of a workout to arrive at a single estimate of the overall training load and physiological stress created by that training session
VOM - V O2 Max
And a few other specific to training
KOM. - King of the Mountain (Stava app)
PR - Personal Record (Strava app)

billyymc

Drope the Hamer

dedhed

If you spend any time in C&V you also have to know "drewed"

mcours2006

This thread has potential...TTHP. All right, I just made that one up.

indyfabz

BF started censoring that a while ago. I was surprised as well, sort of.

Have to run. My therapist is calling to reschedule my upcoming appointment.

Edit: They must have worked on the censor because "therapist" once got censored because of the last six letters.

John Bramson

Maybe it will get sticked? What is the term for a thread becoming a sticky thread?

cb400bill

Lets keep the COVID chat limited to the COVID forum.

John Bramson

I'm sorry, I didn't realize we were talking about COVID related matters? I apologize if I did something wrong.

badger1

... after giving The Look, and then demonstrate the power of your mighty guads.

{Not acronyms, or abbreviations, but certainly expressions with a long history here on teh Biek Forms.}

cxwrench

Most of you have seen the 'b' word. Some of you probably know how I loathe it. There is absolutely no need for this silliness. There are 4 kinds of shifters: Flat bar, Down tube, Bar end, and road brake/shift levers. No one has any problem with the first 3, those descriptions work very well. The last one...the 'b' word'...just stupid. I'd never heard it at the shop level or as a race mechanic, first time I saw it was on a forum. If you're talking about a road bike use 'bar end', 'down tube', or just 'shifter'. We know what you're talking about.

Reynolds 

MHR: Maximum heart rate
RHR: Resting heart rate
BPM: Beats per minute
ERD: Effective rim diameter
OLD: Over locknut dimension

subgrade

OP, I B T L etc. are general messageboard abreviations, not specific to this one alone.

FIFY - fixed it for you (another general message board abbreviation; used when quoting someone and changing a part of the quote, usually for comedic purposes)
IGH - internally geared hub
DF - diamond frame (the classic bike frame consisting of two adjacent triangles when viewed from the side)
CF - carbon fiber
bent - recumbent bicycle

Wildwood 

YMMV
as to mean, My Mileage May Vary

anybody know this one?: TBDMN
(nothing to do with Minnesota, nor To Be Determined)

Reynolds 

Dial it up to 600W!

Rolla

LMGTFY = "Let me Google that for you" (when someone posts a question they could easily look up themselves).

mcours2006

Too bad didn't make the news.

livedarklions

No way I'm typing out "road brake/shift levers" just to indulge your pet peeve. Brifter is a lot shorter and people know what I mean.

badger1

That too!

Rolla

I think brifter sounds stupid too, but so do a lot of words. At least its meaning is clear. Race mechanics and shop rats aren't the arbiters of cycling lingo.