Hashtag

How to spell hashtag

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hashtag

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hashtag mean?

1. nounA word or phrase preceded by the # symbol, used to label and group related posts on social media.
2. 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)