Word.ws English Dictionary

fnord

/fnɔːrd/

fnord noun: a metasyntactic variable, similar to foo and bar.

Noun

fnord (plural fnords)

  1. A metasyntactic variable, similar to foo and bar.

Interjection

  1. A word (which may or may not be "fnord" itself) commonly held to be invisible to the conscious mind, but subliminally causing a sense of unease or sudden anger when encountered. So used in the Illuminatus! trilogy.
  2. A word defined as having no definition.

Forms of fnord

pluralfnords

Origin of fnord

A neologism from the Principia Discordia popularized in the Illuminatus! trilogy.

Questions about fnord

What does fnord mean?
Fnord means a metasyntactic variable, similar to foo and bar.
What part of speech is fnord?
Fnord can be a noun or an interjection.
How do you pronounce fnord?
Fnord is pronounced /fnɔːrd/.
What is the plural of fnord?
The plural of fnord is fnords.

Words near fnord in the dictionary

  1. FNMA
  2. FNMI
  3. FNN
  4. FNNs
  5. FNO
  6. fnord
  7. fnords
  8. FNP
  9. FNPs
  10. FNQ
  11. FNR

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fnord (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Persent101-fnord.wav.

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