go viral
go viral verb: to be rapidly and frequently shared, especially through social media, but (with retroactive application to pre-internet occurrences) also via gossip or as a collective response to broadcasting or widespread print circulation.
Verb
go viral (third-person singular simple present goes viral, present participle going viral, simple past went viral, past participle gone viral)
- To be rapidly and frequently shared, especially through social media, but (with retroactive application to pre-internet occurrences) also via gossip or as a collective response to broadcasting or widespread print circulation.
- Hundreds of long-forgotten texts that went viral in the 19th century are being discovered by a new collaboration of humanities scholars and computer scientists.2013 November 4, Greg Miller, “Here's How Memes Went Viral — In the 1800s ”, in Wired, retrieved 16 Feb 2022
- After watching hours of these videos, I realized there’s no use trying to make sense of any one of them, but taken as a body of work, they tell a story: the struggles of a person trying to go viral again.2020 January 29, Dan Brooks, “Comedy Written for the Machines”, in New York Times Magazine
go viral meaning in Malay
go viral in Malay
- to be rapidly shared
- menular
Forms of go viral
| third-person singular present | goes viral |
|---|---|
| present participle | going viral |
| past | went viral |
| past participle | gone viral |
Origin of go viral
The sociologic phenomenon was named thus because it is analogous to the way in which viruses propagate, with exponential potential. This phrasal verb developed in the late 20th or early 21st century as a name for a phenomenon that has existed since humans became capable of exposing one another to ideas in highly contagious ways; thus, gossip and rumor in close-quartered populations, print circulation, and broadcasting were all enough to produce it, but the advent of the internet, and more specifically the web era and smartphone era, provided many new instances and the occasion to bestow a name on the theme. See also meme, a word coined in 1976 for a phenomenon as old as human interaction.
Questions about go viral
- What does go viral mean?
- Go viral means to be rapidly and frequently shared, especially through social media, but (with retroactive application to pre-internet occurrences) also via gossip or as a collective response to broadcasting or widespread print circulation.
- What is go viral in Malay?
- Go viral in Malay is menular. See Go viral meaning in Malay.
- What part of speech is go viral?
- Go viral is a verb.
- What is the past tense of go viral?
- The past tense of go viral is went viral.
Words near go viral in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: go viral (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:
Cite this entry: “go viral.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/go_viral. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.