Truce term

A truce term is a word or short phrase accepted within a community of children as an effective way of calling for a temporary respite or truce during a game or activity, such as tag or its variants. Common examples in English speaking cultures are barley, fainites, crosses and kings in the United Kingdom, pegs and nibs in New Zealand and variants of barley in Australia. In the United States, terms based on time-out have, from the 1950s onwards, largely supplanted earlier common terms based on kings exe . Since the late 1980s time-out has been recorded in other English speaking cultures besides the US. Examples of use of truce terms are if a child has a stitch or wants to raise a point on the rules of the game.

Traditionally these terms are specific to certain geographical areas although some may be used by a particular social group such as pax in the UK, used primarily by children attending private schools. To be functional a truce term must be understood and honoured by most of the children playing together.