Word.ws English Dictionary

parasocial

parasocial adjective: one-sided (especially of a relationship, as for example that between a celebrity and their audience or fans, whom they do not know).

Adjective

parasocial (not comparable)

  1. One-sided (especially of a relationship, as for example that between a celebrity and their audience or fans, whom they do not know).
    • a parasocial relationship
    • Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl coined the term parasocial interaction in 1956 to describe the imaginary interactions between the audience and TV variety show hosts, noting the “seeming face-to-face relationship” that viewers developed […][2006, Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, editor, Encyclopedia of Children, Adolescents, and the Media, SAGE Publications, →ISBN

Origin of parasocial

From para- + social, coined by American sociologist Richard Wohl, together with American anthropologist, sociologist, and communication researcher Donald Horton in 1956.

Questions about parasocial

What does parasocial mean?
Parasocial means one-sided (especially of a relationship, as for example that between a celebrity and their audience or fans, whom they do not know).
What part of speech is parasocial?
Parasocial is an adjective.

Words near parasocial in the dictionary

  1. parasnowboarded
  2. parasnowboarder
  3. parasnowboarders
  4. parasnowboarding
  5. parasnowboards
  6. parasocial
  7. parasociality
  8. parasocially
  9. parasol
  10. parasol ant
  11. parasol ants

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: parasocial (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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