Word.ws English Dictionary

astroturfing

astroturfing noun: the disguising of an orchestrated campaign as a "grass-roots" event, i.e., a spontaneous upwelling of public opinion.

Noun

astroturfing (uncountable)

  1. (now social media) The disguising of an orchestrated campaign as a "grass-roots" event, i.e., a spontaneous upwelling of public opinion.

Verb capitalized: Astroturfing

Astroturfing

  1. (gerund, participle, present) present participle and gerund of Astroturf

Synonyms of astroturfing

Origin of astroturfing

From AstroTurf (“a synthetic substitute for grass”), a play on grass roots, as in “fake grass roots”. Attributed to U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen in an unidentified 1985 public statement: "[A] fellow from Texas can tell the difference between grassroots and Astroturf."

Questions about astroturfing

What does astroturfing mean?
Astroturfing means the disguising of an orchestrated campaign as a "grass-roots" event, i.e., a spontaneous upwelling of public opinion.
What part of speech is astroturfing?
Astroturfing can be a noun or a verb.

Words near astroturfing in the dictionary

  1. astrotrackers
  2. astroturf
  3. astroturfed
  4. astroturfer
  5. astroturfers
  6. astroturfing
  7. astroturfs
  8. astroturfy
  9. astrotypic
  10. astrovideography
  11. astroviral

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: astroturfing (page history and authors); Astroturfing (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.

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