Word.ws English Dictionary

Wikigroaning

Wikigroaning noun: the act of comparing two similar Wikipedia articles, one considered generally useful and the other primarily appealing to nerdy interests, and observing that (to one's disappointment) the latter is significantly longer and more professionally written.

Noun

Wikigroaning (uncountable)

  1. (humorous, neologism) The act of comparing two similar Wikipedia articles, one considered generally useful and the other primarily appealing to nerdy interests, and observing that (to one's disappointment) the latter is significantly longer and more professionally written.
    • We go Wikigroaning on the SA forums from time to time and feel confident enough to share the fruits of our latest outing with the public. We're pretty proud of some of these. Enjoy!2007 June 5, Jon Hendren, “The Art of Wikigroaning”, in Something Awful, archived from the original on 14 Jan 2024
    • The superabundance of less-than-prized information on the site has led to a phenomenon called "wiki-groaning," which involves comparing the length of seemingly disparate articles to humorous effect. Lightsaber Combat beats out Modern Warfare, for example, and John Locke, the character from the TV...2008 March 16, Noam Cohen, “Start Writing the Eulogies for Print Encyclopedias”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 26 Mar...

Forms of Wikigroaning

alternative formwikigroaning
alternative formwiki-groaning

Origin of Wikigroaning

Blend of Wikipedia + groaning. Coined by Jon Hendren in a 2007 post on Something Awful (see quotation below).

Questions about Wikigroaning

What does Wikigroaning mean?
Wikigroaning means the act of comparing two similar Wikipedia articles, one considered generally useful and the other primarily appealing to nerdy interests, and observing that (to one's disappointment) the latter is significantly longer and more professionally written.
What part of speech is Wikigroaning?
Wikigroaning is a noun.

Words near Wikigroaning in the dictionary

  1. wikifies
  2. wikify
  3. wikifying
  4. WikiGnome
  5. WikiGnomes
  6. Wikigroaning
  7. wikiholic
  8. wikiholics
  9. wikiholism
  10. wikiing
  11. wikilawyer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Wikigroaning (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-Wikigroaning.wav.

Cite this entry: “Wikigroaning.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wikigroaning. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.