Word.ws English Dictionary

sealioning

sealioning noun: a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence or debate, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity, and feigning ignorance of the subject matter, in order to wear down an opponent and incite angry responses that will discredit them. Also the present participle and gerund of sealion.

Noun

sealioning (uncountable)

  1. A type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence or debate, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity, and feigning ignorance of the subject matter, in order to wear down an opponent and incite angry responses that will discredit them.
    • Sealioning is a harassment tactic by which a participant in a debate or online discussion pesters the other participant with disingenuous questions under the guise of sincerity, hoping to erode the patience and goodwill of the target to the point where they appear unreasonable.2022 April 26, Tristan Kennedy, The Conversation
    • Sealioning thus works both to exhaust a target’s patience, attention, and communicative effort, and to portray the target as unreasonable. While the questions of the “sea lion” may seem innocent, they’re intended maliciously.2019 March 7, Amy Johnson, Berkman Klein Centier

Also used as

sealioning is also the present participle and gerund of sealion.

Questions about sealioning

What does sealioning mean?
Sealioning means a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence or debate, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity, and feigning ignorance of the subject matter, in order to wear down an opponent and incite angry responses that will discredit them.
What part of speech is sealioning?
Sealioning is a noun.

Words near sealioning in the dictionary

  1. sealings
  2. sealion
  3. sealioned
  4. sealioner
  5. sealioners
  6. sealioning
  7. sealions
  8. sealless
  9. seallike
  10. sealmaker
  11. sealmakers

Source and license

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