Word.ws English Dictionary

vice signalling

vice signalling noun: the practice of expressing a particular opinion or performing a particular action that is immoral, hateful, or cruel, but popular with the social group one is signalling to, to signal allegiance to or seek popularity with that group.

Noun

vice signalling (uncountable)

  1. The practice of expressing a particular opinion or performing a particular action that is immoral, hateful, or cruel, but popular with the social group one is signalling to, to signal allegiance to or seek popularity with that group.
    • He [Pruitt] is famously obsessed with secrecy (his guards followed him even within the EPA building, as though he were Darth Vader), so the fact that his indiscretions were so indiscreet makes them seem deliberate. One explanation is that he was vice-signalling, trying to prove his Trumpiness to...2019 March 25, Richard Cooke, Tired of Winning: A Chronicle of American Decline, Black Inc., →ISBN
    • Ostracism from mainstream opinion is one of the grounds which the alt-Right presents for wearing racism as a defiant badge of pride. Trump's equivalent instinct is towards anti-political correctness. A way of relating these behaviours is to say that they are, in common, exercises in appropriating...2021 December 30, Richard Shorten, The Ideology of Political Reactionaries, Routledge, →ISBN

Antonyms of vice signalling

Forms of vice signalling

alternative formvice-signalling

Origin of vice signalling

By analogy to virtue signalling.

Questions about vice signalling

What does vice signalling mean?
Vice signalling means the practice of expressing a particular opinion or performing a particular action that is immoral, hateful, or cruel, but popular with the social group one is signalling to, to signal allegiance to or seek popularity with that group.
What part of speech is vice signalling?
Vice signalling is a noun.

Words near vice signalling in the dictionary

  1. vice presidencies
  2. vice presidency
  3. vice president
  4. vice presidential
  5. vice presidents
  6. vice signalling
  7. vice squad
  8. vice squads
  9. vice versa
  10. vice verse
  11. vice versâ

Source and license

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