Word.ws English Dictionary

d-pad

d-pad noun: a plus-shaped directional input pad on a video game controller that allows for eight degrees of movement, now largely superseded by the thumbstick.

Noun (1)

d-pad (plural d-pads)

  1. A plus-shaped directional input pad on a video game controller that allows for eight degrees of movement, now largely superseded by the thumbstick.
    • The strategy that has dominated recently for the last couple of years is to tap the d-pad as fast as humanly possible with one finger, known as hypertapping in the gaming community. In NES Tetris, this skill is crucial, since the speed increases when moving up levels, culminating in level 29, where...2021 June 16, Tzvi Kalb, “What is Old is New Again: NES Tetris”, in The Science Survey
    • Like the name implies, a hypertapping player simply presses left or right on the NES d-pad their desired number of times.2023 December 1, Evelynn Kersting, “GAMES AND TIME”, in University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, page 251, archived from the original on 06 Jun 2025

Noun (2) capitalized: D-pad

D-pad (plural D-pads)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of d-pad.
    • The first known way past the brick wall of Level 29 was a technique that became known as hypertapping. By using a special grip that lets you vibrate a finger over the D-pad directions at least 10 times a second, you can effectively skip the "delayed autoshift" (DAS) that limits how fast pieces can...2024 January 2, Kyle Orland, “34 years later, a 13-year-old hits the NES Tetris “kill screen””, in Ars Technica

Synonyms of d-pad

Forms of d-pad

plurald-pads
alternative formD-pad
pluralD-pads

Origin of d-pad

Shortened from directional pad.

Questions about d-pad

What does d-pad mean?
D-pad means a plus-shaped directional input pad on a video game controller that allows for eight degrees of movement, now largely superseded by the thumbstick.
What part of speech is d-pad?
D-pad is a noun.
What is the plural of d-pad?
The plural of d-pad is d-pads.

Words near d-pad in the dictionary

  1. D-Mode
  2. d-note
  3. d-notes
  4. D-notice
  5. D-notices
  6. d-pad
  7. d-pads
  8. D-pillar
  9. D-pillars
  10. D-post
  11. D-posts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: d-pad (page history and authors); D-pad (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: “d-pad.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/d-pad. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.