Word.ws English Dictionary

grey goo

grey goo noun: a hypothetical end-of-the-world event involving nanotechnology, in which out-of-control self-replicating nanobots consume all life on Earth (or another planet or moon).

Noun

grey goo (uncountable)

  1. A hypothetical end-of-the-world event involving nanotechnology, in which out-of-control self-replicating nanobots consume all life on Earth (or another planet or moon).
    • "Our first priority has to be quarantining Xinchub's body, and examining any Yomingians who may have handled it. I don't think we're headed for a grey-goo scenario here, but we'd all feel really bad if the local biosphere got consumed by nanobots after we left."2007 August 24, Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary, archived from the original on 11 May 2024
    • […]Through this, they learn more, and manage to reverse-engineer the ion drives of the drone, allowing them to move the station very rapidly towards Earth. On their way, they manage to send signals to multiple Foundation facilities, overriding them and using their fabrication plants to make new...2023 October 22, “Exploring the SCP Foundation: SCP-7759 - T is for "Transmission"” (14:43 from the start), in The Exploring Series, retrieved 15 May 2024

Forms of grey goo

alternative USgray goo

Origin of grey goo

Coined by American engineer K. Eric Drexler in 1986 in Engines of Creation.

Questions about grey goo

What does grey goo mean?
Grey goo means a hypothetical end-of-the-world event involving nanotechnology, in which out-of-control self-replicating nanobots consume all life on Earth (or another planet or moon).
What part of speech is grey goo?
Grey goo is a noun.

Words near grey goo in the dictionary

  1. grey friar
  2. grey friars
  3. grey ghost
  4. grey ghosts
  5. grey gold
  6. grey goo
  7. grey gum
  8. grey gums
  9. grey hat
  10. grey hats
  11. grey hen

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grey goo (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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