copypasta - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (2024)

English

Etymology

Blend of copy-paste +‎ pasta.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈkɒpiˌpæstə/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈkɑpiˌpɑstə/
• (Can we verify⁽⁺⁾ this pronunciation?) IPA^(key): /ˈkɒpiˌpeɪstə/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Noun

copypasta (countable and uncountable, plural copypastas)

1. (Internet slang) A block of text which has been copied and pasted from somewhere else, serving as a story or meme. [from 2006]

   • 2006 February 2, anonymous author, “GIKOPE COPYPASTA AND AA ARCHIEVE:”, in 4chan‎^[1], retrieved 2013-09-10:

     Gikope is a really useful program for keeping up with AA and copypasta. I've rapidshared my own achieve, which includes 1000s of AAs and a large collection of copypasta.

   • 2006 June 7, Anonymous Addict, “4chan is broken again”, in Channel 4 BBS‎^[2], archived from the original on 18 July 2007:

     Our Father, who art in 4chan, Anonymous be thy name. Thy sage come, thy will be done on Gaia as it is in 4chan. Give us this day our copypasta, And forgive us our COMBO BREAKERs, as we forgive those who COMBO BREAK against us And lead us not into CP, but deliver us from Piro. For thine is the sandwich, and the win, and the awesome forever and ever. I guarantee it.

   • 2008 January 6, Cory Albrecht, “Re: A treatise on how one willfully becomes an atheist”, in talk.origins‎^[3] (Usenet):

     On the other paw, his further responses are generally rehashings (though not copypastas) of his original screed.

   • 2009 March 4, "Quaoar", “Re: ARS is dead. Long live the trolls!”, in alt.religion.scientology‎^[4] (Usenet):

     Almost everything posted on ARS [alt.religion.scientology] is copypasta from the original posted sources, i.e., web forums.

   • 2009 April 27, R. Hill, “St. Petersburg Times' _Man behind the religion_ 'copypasta' serves David Miscavige's agenda”, in alt.religion.scientology‎^[5] (Usenet):

     It's essentially a (sort of) copypasta of *only the first page* of an article published in the St. Petersburg Times […]

   • 2010 November 12, “Bored at Work? Try Creepypasta, or Web Scares”, in The New York Times‎^[6]:

     Mike Rugnetta […] explained that creepypasta derives from a term called "copypasta," which described any piece of text that was endlessly "copy-pasted" across the Internet.

     See Also

     If Blank Has One Fan Template

   • 2018, Whitney Phillips, Ryan M. Milner, The Ambivalent Internet […] , John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 158:

     This ambivalence is reflected in the countless warnings, rumors, and life tips that are posted on the board. Some of them tried-and-true copypasta, these narratives often include images, annotated instructions, or other ostensibly helpful information.

2. (computing, slang) Code or documentation that has been copied and pasted, often erroneously.

   • 2011 February 1, Polytheus, “r288 committed - ChangeLog for system 6.2-rc1, boot 3.0”, in openetna‎^[7] (Usenet):

     Fix copypasta error in previous patch.

   • 2014 April 7, Taylor R. Campbell, “Vnode API change: add global vnode cache”, in fa.netbsd.tech.kern‎^[8] (Usenet):

     There are a number of file systems that have copypasta of ufs_ihash; adapting these too to vcache should be a piece of cake.

   • 2015 June 27, bulk 88, “documentation: do we want perlblurb?”, in perl.perl5.porters‎^[9] (Usenet):

     Perl's pod docs are a disorganized mess on the relation of hashes, packages, objects, references and globs. The tutorials never make it clear, and instead encourage copypasta.

   • 2016 April 5, Ben Hutchings, “Bug#820038: Copy signatures into udebs”, in linux.debian.maint.boot‎^[10] (Usenet):

     This [bug documentation] is copypasta from the initramfs-tools bug.

   • 2019 February 18, bitrex, “Modern Math”, in sci.electronics.design‎^[11] (Usenet):

     Something like 30% of large codebases on "big name" software projects by Google, Adobe, etc. have "copypasta errors" in code of the form like this, a sh*t-headed way to compare two arrays for reverse equality:
     if (array_1[9] == array_2[0] &&
     array_1[8] == array_2[1] && […]

Derived terms

• creepypasta
• emojipasta

Descendants

• → Polish: copypasta

Translations

See also

• info-dump
• faxlore, photocopylore, xeroxlore
• wall of text

Verb

copypasta (third-person singular simple present copypastas, present participle copypastaing, simple past and past participle copypastaed)

1. (Internet slang, uncommon) To copy and paste data from one website to another, usually text.

   • 2008 March 3, Rudy Canoza, “Re: Meat is a prominent part of chimpanzee diet; pre-human hominids ate meat for 2.25 million years (biologically adapted to meat)”, in alt.food.vegan‎^[12] (Usenet):

     You didn't read the paper. You dully copypastaed the abstract. The abstract is not the paper.

   • 2008 November 4, dot_wa...@hotmail.com, “Re: [FLUFF] Omake challenge time...”, in rec.arts.anime.misc‎^[13] (Usenet):

     Copypasta-ing from my last New Years Challenge, because I'm not feeling creative enough to come up with new teams (and really, I don't think I can top myself with the ones I did get together).

   • 2009 September 7, "Voltaire's Child", “Re: Assuming it is all true..”, in alt.religion.scientology‎^[14] (Usenet):

     He probably meant what Bob Minton used to talk about in the post he used to copypasta and repost all the time […]

Translations

Polish

Polish Wikipedia has an article on:

copypasta

Wikipedia ^pl

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English copypasta.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kɔ.piˈpas.ta/
• Rhymes: -asta
• Syllabification: co‧py‧pas‧ta

Noun

copypastaf

1. (Internet slang) copypasta (block of text which has been copied and pasted from somewhere else)

   Synonym: pasta

Declension

Further reading

• copypasta at Obserwatorium językowe Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego

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