Rave Slang Glossary: What Raver, PLUR, Kandi, and Wook Mean

Someone shouts PLUR across the dance floor, or your friend calls someone a wook. You just nod along, pretending you know exactly what that means. We've all been there, and nobody wants to be the person asking, "wait, what's a totem?"

This rave glossary explains the words you’re most likely to hear at a rave or electronic dance music festival, from PLUR and kandi to wook and totem. Instead of listing everything alphabetically, we group the terms according to where you’ll actually hear them to help you find what you need fast.

By the end of this article, you won’t be clueless at your first rave.

Consider this your rave slang cheat sheet before we get into the details:

A raver is a person who attends raves and EDM festivals and engages with the culture around them: music, fashion, community, and the PLUR (Peace, Love, Unity, Respect) values.

Ravers don’t just show up for the music. They trade kandi (handmade beaded bracelets), plan their outfits weeks in advance, and build a rave fam of regulars they see at every rave.

Also, nobody's gatekeeping this: anyone can be a raver. The term has nothing to do with gender, and nobody hands out membership cards. If the label feels right to you, use it. Show up, join the community, and make the rave scene your own.

PLUR stands for Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect, the rave community's unofficial code of conduct. Ravers use it as a greeting, a compliment, and a reminder to look out for each other. It also covers how you treat strangers on a crowded dance floor during all-night sets.

Ravers widely credit Brooklyn DJ Frankie Bones with PLUR's origin, as he called for peace, love, and unity at his early-1990s warehouse parties. Respect soon got folded into the phrase, and the four words have stuck together ever since.

A few terms related to PLUR culture include:

• PLUR Handshake: Ravers use the PLUR handshake, a four-step hand gesture, while trading kandi.

• Vibes: Vibes describe the mood of a crowd or a set, so good vibes mean everyone is having fun and feeding off the same energy.

• Rave Fam: Your rave fam is your festival squad, the tight group of friends you go to raves with.

Spend a weekend at dance parties, and you'll start noticing the regulars, the ones who show up early, stay through the encore, and somehow know everyone. Rave culture has nicknames for most of them, mostly affectionate and occasionally a warning.

Here are some rave nicknames in case you earn one yourself:

• Rave Mom/ Rave Dad: The friend who carries festival essentials you might forget while packing, such as sunscreen, electrolyte packets, and a phone charger.

• Rail Riders: Attendees who show up hours early to claim a spot at the front barrier.

• Junglist: A devoted fan of jungle and drum and bass music.

• Headliner: The biggest name on the festival lineup, playing the prime slot.

• Openers: Acts that play early sets and warm up the crowd before the headliner.

• Wook: A slang term for a free-spirited, deeply immersed festivalgoer associated with counterculture and festival communities. The term originated in jam-band and Deadhead touring culture and has since spread to festivals like Burning Man. You can use it affectionately among friends, but it may sound insulting when you direct it at a stranger.

• Wook Flu: The wrecked, foggy feeling that hits you a day or two after a festival ends.

These are the words you'll hear most while a DJ is actually playing. A set is simply a DJ's performance slot, usually running 1-2 hours. When the beat finally lands after a long build, that's the drop, and you'll feel it in your chest as much as your ears. Two DJs sharing one set and trading off tracks are playing B2B, or back-to-back.

EDM genres shape the vocabulary too. Whether it's dubstep, hardstyle, or classic house and techno, each corner of the electronic music scene brings its own crowd and slang.

What if you hear a track you don't recognize? Just ask "ID?" (short for "identify"), and someone nearby usually has the answer. When a DJ is really going for it, dancers say they're throwing down, and the crowd usually returns the favor.

A few more terms worth knowing are:

• Light Show/ Gloving: A light show is the close-up performance one raver gives another using LED lights on their fingertips or glow sticks. The art itself is called gloving, and the people who do it are glovers.

• Shuffle: This fast heel-toe dance style is the one you've seen in every festival video.

• Rail: The rail is the front barrier. It is closest to the stage and usually the rowdiest spot in the crowd.

You don't need all of these on night one. The words set and drop will do most of the talking in the dance scene.

Rave slang has its own words for what you wear and carry. In this section, we also cover a few rave fashion terms beyond the slang itself. Here's what we've got:

• Fit: A fit is an outfit you plan for a specific show or festival, part of your overallfestival clothing rotation, like our Raven Desert Festival outfit.

• Totem: A totem is a sign on a tall pole that groups use to find each other in a crowd.

• Pashmina: A lightweight scarf that helps keep you shaded, useful since some raves begin while the sun is still up.

• Face Gems: Face gems are stick-on rhinestones (small crystal stones) you press onto your cheeks and brows.

• Fringe: Fringe refers to the long strands that swing when you dance, like the ones on our Zita crystal fringe bodysuit (a fitted one-piece that snaps at the bottom).

• Platform Shoes: A rave-scene staple that adds height and stage presence.

• Mirror Wear: Reflective, disco-ball-style pieces like our ultimate fave Blair luxury mirror bodysuit.

These outfits are just a glimpse of our statement festival clothing options. For a complete list, check out our guide on what to wear to a rave: shoes, bags, and everything else.

Knowing rave slang is the easy part. The next step is knowing when to use the terms properly so you don't sound like you’re trying too hard. Use this table as your quick guide:

Keep in mind that slang shifts by rave scene and by year, so what lands in Detroit techno circles might get blank stares at a bass show. You’re not expected to know every slang term, so asking someone what a word means is definitely part of PLUR.

Thanks for sticking with us through the full glossary. You now know enough PLUR, kandi, and dance-floor slang to walk in like a regular, not a first-timer. So show up, be kind, find your rhythm, and connect with the wider EDM community.

Still figuring out what to wear? Start with our best sellers, the rave pieces our community keeps coming back to. Then browse our women’s rave outfit collection and makeup ideas to build a complete look that feels unmistakably you.