Word.ws English Dictionary

Pac-Man effect

Pac-Man effect proper noun: the flat-earth belief that someone attempting to go over the edge of the flat Earth would teleport to the other side.

Proper noun

the Pac-Man effect

  1. (informal) The flat-earth belief that someone attempting to go over the edge of the flat Earth would teleport to the other side.

Origin of Pac-Man effect

In reference to the arcade game Pac-Man (1980), where the player character can warp through a tunnel from one side of the screen to the other.

Questions about Pac-Man effect

What does Pac-Man effect mean?
Pac-Man effect means the flat-earth belief that someone attempting to go over the edge of the flat Earth would teleport to the other side.
What part of speech is Pac-Man effect?
Pac-Man effect is a proper noun.

Words near Pac-Man effect in the dictionary

  1. Pac-Man
  2. Pac-Man defence
  3. Pac-Man defences
  4. Pac-Man defense
  5. Pac-Man defenses
  6. Pac-Man effect
  7. Pac-Man illusion
  8. Pac-Men
  9. Pac.
  10. paca
  11. paca-rana

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Pac-Man effect (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: “Pac-Man effect.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pac-man_effect. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.