Skip to content
ontologydriven
Sign out

Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

infohazard en · NOUN

Pronunciation

  • /ˈɪnfəʊˌhæzəd/ (Received-Pronunciation)
  • /ˈɪnfoʊˌhæzɚd/ (General-American)
  • (US) audio

Etymology

Blend of information + hazard or info + hazard. Analogous to biohazard and possibly modeled after it.

Meanings

  1. A piece of information which is directly harmful to one who knows it.
    • If a meme is any idea that gets in your head, then an "infohazard" is a meme that's actively harmful to its host. 2019 August 28, Fletcher Wortmann, “Infohazard Warning: How Internal Memes Infect Your Brain”, in Triggered, Psychology Today, archived from the original on 15 Nov 2021:
    • A basilisk, in this context, is information that can hurt you simply because you are aware of it. Yudkowsky uses the term 'infohazard'. [2019 June 13, Tom Chivers, The AI Does Not Hate You, Orion Publishing Group, →ISBN:
  2. An information hazard; a piece of information which can be used to cause harm by one who knows it.

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
infohazards Number=Plur lexicographic

Coordinates

cognitohazard · biohazard

Deriveds

infohazardous

Hypernyms

hazard · danger

Relateds

prion · go viral · virality

Synonyms

memetic hazard