nihilartikel

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See also: Nihilartikel

English

Etymology

Borrowed from German Nihilartikel, apparently coined as a hoax in the German-language Wikipedia in 2003 and later picked up by the English Wikipedia, from where it spread to blogs,[1] books,[2] etc., which are now used again as references for these sites, leading to a form of citogenesis.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈnaɪ.(h)ɪlˌɑɹt.ɪkl̩/
  • (copying Latin and German) IPA(key): /ˈniː.hiːl.ɑːɹtˌiː.kəl/
  • Hyphenation: ni‧hil‧art‧i‧kel

Noun

Examples

nihilartikel (plural nihilartikels)

  1. A deliberately fictitious entry in an encyclopedia or academic work, generally identifiable as false, usually included to brand the intellectual property so copies can be identified.
    Synonym: Mountweazel
    • 2005 May 1, Eve Maler, “The Language Log”, Pushing String, at www.xmlgrrl.com
      The post never does find the word it’s looking for, but it eventually alights on a discussion of the Nihilartikel, a fake dictionary or encyclopedia entry created for playful or copyright-trap reasons.
    • 2005 December 17, Marc Goodman, “Interesting slam on Wikipedia”, in alt.religion.kibology (Usenet), message-ID <[email protected]>:
      A nihilartikel was once inserted into Wikipedia that lasted for five months.

Hypernyms

See also

References

  1. ^ Michael Quinion (1996–2024) “Nihilartikel”, in World Wide Words.
  2. ^ David C. Hay (2006) Data Model Patterns: A Metadata Map, Morgan Kaufmann, glossary, page 370

Further reading