Wikipedia — English Dictionary

Proper noun

1. A free-content, multilingual, online encyclopedia and wiki run by the Wikimedia Foundation.

   Examples

   He joined Wikipedia two years ago.

   Shopping online for deals on some writable media / I edit Wikipedia

   More examples (7)

   Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject, so you know you are getting the best possible information.

   Bart: So Dean Martin would show up at the last minute and do everything in just one take? Homer: That's right. Bart: But Wikipedia said he was “passionate about rehearsal.” Homer: Don't you worry about Wikipedia. We'll change it when we get home.

   Civility – translated as savoir-vivre in the French version – is one of the five "pillars" of Wikipedia.

   To see how ghastly things have turned, look at the pages of the highly popular Wikipedia. Its free accessibility has made it a very useful and popular Internet resource. Then due to reports by Nature in 2005 of Wikipedia’s higher accuracy than online offerings of the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Wikipedia has been gaining in respect as a legitimate online reference source. […]

   Sirius is 8.6 light years away / Arcturus is 37 / The past is the past and it's here to stay / Wikipedia is Heaven / When you don't want to remember no more / On the far side of the morning

   "Cottagecore" refers to an internet aesthetic that, according to Wikipedia, "celebrates a return to traditional skills and crafts such as foraging, baking, and pottery, and is related to similar nostalgic aesthetic movements such as grandmacore, farmcore, goblincore, and faeriecore."

   […] we could be on the cusp of a genuine technological revolution where systems like GPT-3 replace search engines or Wikipedia as our default resource for discovering information.

2. The community that develops Wikipedia.

   Usage

   • metonymically

   Examples

   In August 2009, Wikipedia announced that it planned a move that many saw as a step away from its freewheeling ethos of anyone can edit.

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   Wikipedia mounted a 24-hour protest starting at midnight by converting their English page to a shadowy black background and warning readers that "the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet."

3. A main-belt asteroid (No. 274301).

Noun

1. A version of the encyclopedia Wikipedia in a particular language.

   Examples

   There are over five million articles on the English Wikipedia.

   Work in the open-source software community or contribute to wikipedias on your favourite subjects.

2. A wiki or similar collaborative database, especially one that is also an encyclopaedia.

   Examples

   His new project is to create a Wikipedia for UFO sightings from all around the world.

   More examples (4)

   Likewise, it is much more important to build a complete set of libraries for all aspects of computing, a Wikipedia of free code, than to worry that further language innovation is the gating factor towards any future progress in software.

   The library will function something like a Wikipedia of drug discovery, where scientists around the world can contribute to the database and even provide samples or screen drugs themselves, thereby saving millions of dollars on R&D.

   And when interesting ideas arose, such as creating a Wikipedia of top-secret content for the intelligence community, he provided cover for those ideas to develop.

   There are rules in TF2 [Team Fortress 2] set around healing redeployed buildings, and not only are they pretty specific and circumstantial, I discovered that buildings have a hidden mechanic that I honestly didn't know existed up until this point, and as far as I know, it isn't even listed on the TF2 Wikipedia.

3. An article or page on Wikipedia.

   Usage

   • Colloquial

   Examples

   He learned a lot of things according to his Wikipedia / and demonstrates his ample intellect on social media.

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   We spent our days off huddled in blankets and fleeces on our awful bony couch, listening to the radio and writing in our notebooks or sending emails or ‘doing research’, which for me meant reading the Wikipedias of lesser-known serial killers[…]

4. A source of abundant encyclopedic knowledge.

   Usage

   • Colloquial
   • Figurative

   Examples

   Her mind was a Wikipedia of useless information.

   We had no illusions of providing a 360° coverage of the sociology of religion, or of confusing a Handbook with a wikipedia.

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   And it is so entertaining when he shares his stories about the other great traders he knows. He is a Wikipedia of trading anecdotes.

   While time had given Britney nothing but a befuddling choice for a (now ex-) husband, children, and headaches, my friend had emerged with a Wikipedia of online dating information.

   Her brain was a Wikipedia of songs, and she could give anybody a run for the money with music trivia.

   God does not call us to be spiritual Wikipedias. If we do not know the answers to questions asked, we should say so and offer to research the topic. Our honesty is as important as an excellent answer and reveals that we are still learners.

Verb

1. To consult Wikipedia for information.

   Usage

   • Colloquial
   • Intransitive

   Examples

   Did a bit of Wikipediaing: […]

   Is everybody in this group incapable of arithmetic, Googling, and Wikipediaing?

   More examples (2)

   A little Wikipediaing could've told him that—sometimes it feels like I'm the only one willing to do the research.

   I mean, honestly, it was me doing some Wikipediaing.

2. To search Wikipedia for information on a specific subject.

   Usage

   • Colloquial
   • Transitive

   Examples

   More examples (2)

   I mean, it's true, if Katie Holmes had not become engaged to Tom Cruise, we'd all still be Wikipeidaing her, looking her up, trying to figure out exactly why do I know her, what was she in, is she famous?

   He made me curious enough that I Wikipediaed Bob Satterfield and found out, yes, he was a real fighter, nicknamed the Bombadier, and was KO'd by the Raging Bull himself in a 1946 fight in Wrigley Field.

   That’s a true fact, you can Wikipedia that shizz.

   More examples (2)

   […] her mother was "homeschooling" her via the Internet (basically, Wikipediaing the Important Facts from the History of the World, and ordering appropriate-level math textbooks from Amazon) […]

   If you wikipedia "dead", it says that it is the permanent termination of all biological functions that sustain living organisms. What it doesn't tell you is how to cope with that.

   Honestly, I had to Wikipedia him, but he seems all right.