Word.ws English Dictionary

metacrap

metacrap noun: metatheory, metanalysis, and other meta disciplines.

Noun

metacrap (uncountable)

  1. (derogatory) Metatheory, metanalysis, and other meta disciplines.
    • In art, as in language, “cutting out the metacrap” means to get at the “core” meaning beneath the “superficial form” of a work; what it seems to be is different from what it means.1998, John Haiman, Talk Is Cheap: Sarcasm, Alienation, and the Evolution of Language, page 118
    • Clearly the layers of pretense and self-awareness and metacrap are thick.2011, Joyce Cho and Višnja Rogošic, "Burning the Rules, PAJ: Journal of Performance and Art, Volume 33, Number 2, May 2011
  2. (Internet, derogatory) Low-quality or unreliable metadata.
    • People who refer to the metacrap argument are generally advocating “letting the software sort it out” instead of asking people to explicitly tag everything before making any contribution.2004, Christian Crumlish, The Power of Many, page 246
    • More formally we can say that the metadata is fragile or inconsistent. More forcefully this has been described as 'metacrap'.2008, Duncan Grey, Getting the Buggers to Find Out: Information Skills and Learning How to Learn, page 175

Origin of metacrap

From meta- + crap. The "metadata" sense was coined by Canadian-British-American blogger, journalist, and science fiction author Cory Doctorow in 2001.

Questions about metacrap

What does metacrap mean?
Metacrap means metatheory, metanalysis, and other meta disciplines.
What part of speech is metacrap?
Metacrap is a noun.

Words near metacrap in the dictionary

  1. metacosmic
  2. metacosms
  3. metacoxa
  4. metacoxae
  5. metacoxal
  6. metacrap
  7. metacraton
  8. metacratonic
  9. metacratons
  10. metacrawler
  11. metacrawlers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: metacrap (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: “metacrap.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/metacrap. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.