Word.ws English Dictionary

tech noir

tech noir noun: a genre of film, science-fiction film-noir cinema.

Noun

tech noir (countable and uncountable, plural tech noirs)

  1. (uncountable) A genre of film, science-fiction film-noir cinema.
  2. (broadly, uncountable) A genre of fiction, thematically like that of the film genre.
  3. (countable) A work of fiction in that genre.

Forms of tech noir

pluraltech noirs
alternative formtech-noir

Origin of tech noir

Blend of tech (“technology”) + film noir. From the close association of high tech with sci-fi. Folk etymology suggests this was coined by Canadian filmmaker and explorer James Cameron, when he named the dance club in the 1984 film The Terminator "Tech-Noir", and the fandom and critics labelled similar IP properties as "tech noir".

Questions about tech noir

What does tech noir mean?
Tech noir means a genre of film, science-fiction film-noir cinema.
What part of speech is tech noir?
Tech noir is a noun.
What is the plural of tech noir?
The plural of tech noir is tech noirs.

Words near tech noir in the dictionary

  1. tech house
  2. tech lord
  3. tech lords
  4. tech neck
  5. tech necks
  6. tech noir
  7. tech noirs
  8. tech pack
  9. tech packs
  10. tech stack
  11. tech stacks

Source and license

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