Word.ws English Dictionary

nihilartikel

Syllables: ni·hil·art·i·kel/ˈnaɪ.(h)ɪlˌɑɹt.ɪkl̩/

nihilartikel noun: a deliberately fictitious entry in an encyclopedia or academic work, generally identifiable as false, usually included to brand the intellectual property so copies can be identified.

Noun

nihilartikel (plural nihilartikels)

  1. A deliberately fictitious entry in an encyclopedia or academic work, generally identifiable as false, usually included to brand the intellectual property so copies can be identified.
    • The post never does find the word it’s looking for, but it eventually alights on a discussion of the Nihilartikel, a fake dictionary or encyclopedia entry created for playful or copyright-trap reasons.2005 May 1, Eve Maler, “The Language Log”, Pushing String, at www.xmlgrrl.com https://web.archive.org/web/20061111100505/http://www.xmlgrrl.com/blog/archives/2005/05/01/the-language-log/
    • A nihilartikel was once inserted into Wikipedia that lasted for five months.2005 December 17, Marc Goodman, “Interesting slam on Wikipedia”, in alt.religion.kibology (Usenet), message-ID <aYqdnU-48IgKJznenZ2dnUVZ_sydnZ2d@newedgenetworks.com>
    Synonyms:
    Mountweazel

Synonyms of nihilartikel

Forms of nihilartikel

pluralnihilartikels

Origin of nihilartikel

Borrowed from German Nihilartikel, apparently coined as a hoax in the German-language Wikipedia in 2003 and later picked up by the English Wikipedia, from where it spread to blogs, books, etc., which are now used again as references for these sites, leading to a form of citogenesis.

Questions about nihilartikel

What does nihilartikel mean?
Nihilartikel means a deliberately fictitious entry in an encyclopedia or academic work, generally identifiable as false, usually included to brand the intellectual property so copies can be identified.
What part of speech is nihilartikel?
Nihilartikel is a noun.
How do you pronounce nihilartikel?
Nihilartikel is pronounced /ˈnaɪ.(h)ɪlˌɑɹt.ɪkl̩/.
What is the plural of nihilartikel?
The plural of nihilartikel is nihilartikels.

Words near nihilartikel in the dictionary

  1. nihil debet
  2. nihil dicit
  3. nihil dicits
  4. nihil obstat
  5. nihil obstats
  6. nihilartikel
  7. nihilartikels
  8. nihilate
  9. nihilated
  10. nihilates
  11. nihilating

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nihilartikel (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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