Word.ws English Dictionary

404

UK/ˈfɔːɹəʊˌfɔː(ɹ)/

404 adjective: not found, especially of a web page on the Internet.

Adjective

404 (not comparable)

  1. (slang) Not found, especially of a web page on the Internet.
    • Bill was 404 all morning.

Noun

404 (plural 404s)

  1. An error indicating that a web page could not be found.
    • Return 404s for all deleted pages. Some search engine marketers suggest redirecting old products to semantically related products instead of 404ing. This preserves link equity, whereas a 404 does not.2007, Cristian Darie, Jaimie Sirovich, Professional Search Engine Optimization with ASP.NET: A Developer's Guide to SEO, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 113
  2. (Nigeria, colloquial) Dog meat.

Verb

404 (third-person singular simple present 404s, present participle 404ing, simple past and past participle 404ed or 404'd)

  1. To return an error indicating that a web page could not be found.
    • Return 404s for all deleted pages. Some search engine marketers suggest redirecting old products to semantically related products instead of 404ing. This preserves link equity, whereas a 404 does not.2007, Cristian Darie, Jaimie Sirovich, Professional Search Engine Optimization with ASP.NET: A Developer's Guide to SEO, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 113

Forms of 404

Noun
plural404s
Verb
third-person singular present404s
present participle404ing
past participle404ed
past404ed
past participle404'd
past404'd

Origin of 404

From the HTTP error status code 404, meaning Not Found, returned by a web server responding to a request for a URL at which no resource exists.

Words formed from 404

Phrases with 404

Questions about 404

What does 404 mean?
404 means not found, especially of a web page on the Internet.
What part of speech is 404?
404 can be an adjective, a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce 404?
404 is pronounced /ˈfɔːɹəʊˌfɔː(ɹ)/ (UK).

Words near 404 in the dictionary

  1. 400-day clocks
  2. 401(k)
  3. 401(k)s
  4. 401k
  5. 401ks
  6. 404
  7. 404 page
  8. 404 pages
  9. 404'd
  10. 404ed
  11. 404ing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 404 (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-404.ogg.

Cite this entry: “404.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/404. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.