Word.ws English Dictionary

Poe's Law

Poe's Law is the alternative letter-case form of Poe's law.

Proper noun capitalized: Poe's law

Poe's law

  1. The observation that, on the Internet, without a clear indication of the author's intent, it is impossible to tell the difference between sincere extremism and a parody of extremism.
    • If you accept Poe's Law, you hold that religious believers are indistinguishable from their parodies.2013, Scott F. Aikin, Robert B. Talisse, Why We Argue (And How We Should) […] , Routledge, →ISBN, page 130
    • But Poe's Law isn't only useful as a defense against pearl-clutching reactions. It's also a diagnosis of exactly how the troll mentality has weakened internet culture. […] But because the internet has changed in innumerable ways since 2005, expanding and accelerating all the while, Poe's Law...2017 June 5, Emma Grey Ellis, “Can't Take a Joke? That's Just Poe's Law, 2017's Most Important Internet Phenomenon”, in WIRED, →ISSN, archived from the original on 13 Jul 2018

Forms of Poe's Law

alternative formPoe's Law

Origin of Poe's Law

Formulated in 2005 by a user named “Nathan Poe” on the website christianforums.com, originally in the context of creationism.

Questions about Poe's Law

What does Poe's Law mean?
Poe's Law means the observation that, on the Internet, without a clear indication of the author's intent, it is impossible to tell the difference between sincere extremism and a parody of extremism.
What is Poe's Law the alternative letter-case form of?
Poe's Law is the alternative letter-case form of Poe's law.
What part of speech is Poe's Law?
Poe's Law is a proper noun.

Words near Poe's Law in the dictionary

  1. podzolizing
  2. podzols
  3. podzoluvisol
  4. podzoluvisols
  5. poe
  6. Poe's Law
  7. Poe-esque
  8. Poe-like
  9. POEA
  10. PoEAA
  11. Poean

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Poe's Law (page history and authors); Poe's law (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: “Poe's Law.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/poe%27s_law. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.