Hashtag
nounA word or phrase preceded by the # symbol, used to label and group related posts on social media.
How to spell hashtag
7 letters · 2 syllables
25 of the 56 people asked to spell hashtag in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.
How to pronounce hashtag
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does hashtag mean?
- nounA word or phrase preceded by the # symbol, used to label and group related posts on social media.
- verbTo mark a post or word with the # symbol so it can be grouped and searched.
Hashtag in a sentence
-
noun
The marketing team invented a catchy hashtag for the product launch.
-
verb
Many users hashtag their travel photos to reach a wider audience.
-
noun
She added a popular hashtag to the caption so more people would find the photo.
-
verb
Brands often hashtag each product name in their online updates.
Where does hashtag come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
This is a thoroughly modern compound built from two older English pieces. The first part, 'hash', is the long-standing nickname for the symbol #, a name that grew out of 'hatch' and 'cross-hatching', the term for the criss-crossed lines that the symbol resembles. The second part, 'tag', meaning a label or marker attached to something, has murky origins, possibly from a Scandinavian source, and by the late twentieth century it had become common in computing for a keyword used to classify content. The two were welded together around 2007, when a user proposed grouping conversations on the social network Twitter by placing a # in front of a keyword. The coinage spread with astonishing speed, and 'hashtag' entered mainstream dictionaries within a few years. Because the word is a plain joining of two familiar parts, the spelling is straightforward: one h-a-s-h followed by t-a-g, with no hidden letters.
How the word is built
- hash (the # symbol, from 'hash mark')
- tag (a label or marker)
People who misspell hashtag also struggle with
Of the Spelling Garden players who got hashtag wrong the first time, this is how many also got each of these wrong.
Fix your spelling for good.
Spelling Garden finds the words you personally get wrong, plants them in a garden, and brings each one back just before you would have forgotten it.
Just five minutes a day is all it takes to fix your spelling.