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hashtag

US/ˈhæʃˌtæɡ/
nounB1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechneutral

Other forms: hashtags

A hashtag is the hash symbol plus a word, used to tag posts. Add a hashtag.

It was proposed by a user rather than by any company and adopted from below. A hashtag works only if enough people choose the same one, which nobody can arrange.

Breadyornot · CC BY-SA 4.0

Definitions of hashtag

  1. 1nounhashtagThe # symbol plus a word, used to tag posts on social media.B1

    “One hashtag turned a local complaint into a national story.”

hashtag is a tag.

Where it comes from

Hash plus tag; proposed by Chris Messina in 2007 for grouping messages on Twitter.

From earlier hash tag, from hash (sign) + tag. The hash sign # was initially proposed as tag hash by Chris Messina to create groups on Twitter, modeled after the IRC channel prefix. First published use as hash tag by Stowe Boyd in 2007.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Technology & Internet

Practise this word

hashtag in the wild

  • Christopher Reaves Messina is an American blogger, product consultant and speaker who proposed the usage of the hashtag as it is currently used on social media platforms.

    Chris Messina (inventor)

  • In a 2007 tweet, Messina proposed vertical/associational grouping of messages, trends, and events on Twitter by the means of hashtags.

    Chris Messina (inventor)

  • A hashtag is a metadata tag operator that is prefaced by the hash symbol, #.

    Hashtag

  • For example, a search within Instagram for the hashtag #flowers returns all posts that have been tagged with that term.

    Hashtag

  • Hashtag activism refers to the use of hashtags on social media platforms as a form of Internet activism.

    Hashtag activism

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.