napster
/nˈæpstɚ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.57 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Any website that facilitates free distribution of data.
verb
To download from Napster.
verb
To upload to or as if to Napster.
verb
To shut down, especially for copyright infringement, as Napster was.
Example Sentences
- "Some in the used-book industry are questioning whether Amazon.com is becoming the Napster of the book business."
- "It would be easy to call the venture-backed, San Mateo-based YouTube the Napster of video, an outlaw startup rocketing onto dotcom radar screens on the backs of rights-holders. But that's a designation that the year-old company desperately wants to avoid."
- "In many fields, we now have the equivalent of Spotify for research: vast databases that help scholars search millions of articles and connect them—often through highly restrictive and increasingly unsustainable subscriptions, but that is another story—instantly to digital copies. (There is also a Napster for research articles, of which we shall not speak.)"
- "I have done my part this year by buying fewer albums than in any year since, um, 1982 I think it was. No, I haven't been Napstering them, either. I'm catching up to my backlog of listening, listening to the radio, and most-of-all spending a lot of time with demos of friends' bands, and with the tapes I make of my live show every week."
- "I've got the first four albums on vinyl. Nothing on CD, other than a few "napstered" songs."
- "Anyway, I noticed recently that somebody had Napstered the song, and I presume that tapes of the single were floating around long before the internet."
Etymology
Named after Napster, a file-sharing system (not itself a website) that facilitated the copying of copyrighted MP3 audio files, itself named after a nickname of its creator Shawn Fanning, referring to his nappy-textured hair; hence nap + -ster.
Word Breakdown
Inflected Forms
Napsters (plural)
Napsters (present, singular)
Napstering (participle, present)
Napstered (participle, past)
Napstered (past)