"fail whale" meaning in English

See fail whale in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: fail whales [plural]
Etymology: The fail whale originated on Twitter; the term was coined by web designer Jen Simmons in 2007 in a tweet. Etymology templates: {{coinage|en|Jen Simmons|in=2007|nobycat=1|nocap=1|occ=web designer}} coined by web designer Jen Simmons in 2007 Head templates: {{en-noun}} fail whale (plural fail whales)
  1. (Internet slang) An image of a whale that formerly accompanied certain error messages on the Twitter microblogging website. Wikipedia link: Twitter, Twitter#Outages Tags: Internet Categories (topical): Twitter

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for fail whale meaning in English (2.3kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "Jen Simmons",
        "in": "2007",
        "nobycat": "1",
        "nocap": "1",
        "occ": "web designer"
      },
      "expansion": "coined by web designer Jen Simmons in 2007",
      "name": "coinage"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "The fail whale originated on Twitter; the term was coined by web designer Jen Simmons in 2007 in a tweet.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "fail whales",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "fail whale (plural fail whales)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with language name categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with topic categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English rhyming compounds",
          "parents": [
            "Rhyming compounds",
            "Compound terms",
            "Rhyming phrases",
            "Terms by etymology",
            "Phrases",
            "Lemmas"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
            "Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Twitter",
          "orig": "en:Twitter",
          "parents": [
            "Social media",
            "World Wide Web",
            "Internet",
            "Mass media",
            "Computing",
            "Networking",
            "Culture",
            "Media",
            "Technology",
            "Society",
            "Communication",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An image of a whale that formerly accompanied certain error messages on the Twitter microblogging website."
      ],
      "id": "en-fail_whale-en-noun-gVjwZIAV",
      "links": [
        [
          "Internet",
          "Internet"
        ],
        [
          "slang",
          "slang"
        ],
        [
          "whale",
          "whale"
        ],
        [
          "error message",
          "error message"
        ],
        [
          "microblogging",
          "microblogging"
        ],
        [
          "website",
          "website"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(Internet slang) An image of a whale that formerly accompanied certain error messages on the Twitter microblogging website."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Internet"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Twitter",
        "Twitter#Outages"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "fail whale"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "Jen Simmons",
        "in": "2007",
        "nobycat": "1",
        "nocap": "1",
        "occ": "web designer"
      },
      "expansion": "coined by web designer Jen Simmons in 2007",
      "name": "coinage"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "The fail whale originated on Twitter; the term was coined by web designer Jen Simmons in 2007 in a tweet.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "fail whales",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "fail whale (plural fail whales)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English coinages",
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
        "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
        "English internet slang",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English rhyming compounds",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "en:Twitter"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An image of a whale that formerly accompanied certain error messages on the Twitter microblogging website."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "Internet",
          "Internet"
        ],
        [
          "slang",
          "slang"
        ],
        [
          "whale",
          "whale"
        ],
        [
          "error message",
          "error message"
        ],
        [
          "microblogging",
          "microblogging"
        ],
        [
          "website",
          "website"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(Internet slang) An image of a whale that formerly accompanied certain error messages on the Twitter microblogging website."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Internet"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Twitter",
        "Twitter#Outages"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "fail whale"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.