zalgo
zalgo is the alternative letter-case form of Zalgo.
Noun capitalized: Zalgo
Zalgo (uncountable)
- In full Zalgo text: digital text to which random Unicode diacritics have been copiously applied, obscuring the text, often protruding out of expected text boundaries, and imparting a "cursed" feeling.
- See also: heavy metal umlaut
- > I've been wondering lately why more isn't done with Unicode-art. / > / the closest thing I can think to that is zalgo, which is more stupidity than art.2010 June 14, oonh, “Re: (Futurist Comments) That was Then, This is Now”, in alt.gothic (Usenet), message-ID <nfohe7-48k.ln1@abyss.ninehells.com>
- Synonyms:
- glitch text
Proper noun capitalized: Zalgo
Zalgo
- A notional entity said to be "released" due to unpredictable program behaviour resulting from an API's inconsistent use of synchronous versus asynchronous operations.
- Anyway. My personal opinion is that people are making a bigger deal about it than it needs to be. Just be aware that there could maybe potentially be an issue in your app if you release Zalgo, but don't spend the hours going through and wrapping everything in nextTick just to say you are Zalgo-free...2013 August 30, Paul, “Re: [nodejs] Downside to not wrapping sync callbacks in nextTick()?”, in nodejs (Google Groups), 53ece666-5929-41ba-843c-edc4350af00d@googlegroups.com
- This works wonderfully, until you hit an exception in one of your zalgo-promise functions.2013 August 30, Dean Landolt, “Re: [nodejs] Downside to not wrapping sync callbacks in nextTick()?”, in nodejs (Google Groups), CAPm8pjp2ogU58Z5RsZ_RQb_O=iB3RBeoh1eyM6xp-0Vwm7cebQ@mail.gmail.com
Synonyms of zalgo
Origin of zalgo
Said to have been coined in 2004 by Dave “Shmorky” Kelly as the name of a mysterious malevolent entity appearing in webcomics and creepypasta.
Questions about zalgo
- What does zalgo mean?
- Zalgo means in full Zalgo text: digital text to which random Unicode diacritics have been copiously applied, obscuring the text, often protruding out of expected text boundaries, and imparting a "cursed" feeling.
- What is zalgo the alternative letter-case form of?
- Zalgo is the alternative letter-case form of Zalgo.
- What part of speech is zalgo?
- Zalgo can be a noun or a proper noun.
Words near zalgo in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: zalgo (page history and authors); Zalgo (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: “zalgo.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/zalgo. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.