Word.ws English Dictionary

greentext

/ˈɡɹiːn.tɛkst/

greentext noun: a short anecdote posted on 4chan, typically written in all lowercase, in present tense, using the imperative mood without an explicit subject, and often dealing with social ineptness. Each line is usually concise and begins with >.

Noun

greentext (plural greentexts)

  1. (Internet) A short anecdote posted on 4chan, typically written in all lowercase, in present tense, using the imperative mood without an explicit subject, and often dealing with social ineptness. Each line is usually concise and begins with >.
    • Thus, we have not covered patterns that were just emerging as we finished our manuscript, such as the discussion of urban legends and misinformation in the Ask Reddit section of reddit^([sic]), the greentext stories on 4chan, or the numerous references to urban legends on Bustle.2019 August 12, William Aspray, James W. Cortada, From Urban Legends to Political Fact-Checking: Online Scrutiny in America, 1990-2015, Springer, →ISBN, page 78
    • These are anecdotes written in short, concise sentences that use the 4chan platform's 'greentext' formatting code, which is a function built into the site's forum software that renders any text preceded by an angled, right-facing bracket green in colour.2021 January 14, Lawrence May, Digital Zombies, Undead Stories: Narrative Emergence and Videogames, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, →ISBN, page 208

Forms of greentext

pluralgreentexts

Origin of greentext

From green + text; so named for the fact that on 4chan, a line of text is rendered green when preceded with the > character.

Questions about greentext

What does greentext mean?
Greentext means a short anecdote posted on 4chan, typically written in all lowercase, in present tense, using the imperative mood without an explicit subject, and often dealing with social ineptness. Each line is usually concise and begins with >.
What part of speech is greentext?
Greentext is a noun.
How do you pronounce greentext?
Greentext is pronounced /ˈɡɹiːn.tɛkst/.
What is the plural of greentext?
The plural of greentext is greentexts.

Words near greentext in the dictionary

  1. greenswards
  2. greentail
  3. greentailing
  4. greentails
  5. greentech
  6. greentext
  7. greentexts
  8. greenth
  9. greenthorn
  10. Greentree
  11. greenuk

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: greentext (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)-Flame, not lame-greentext.wav.

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