rickroll
/ˈɹɪkˌɹoʊl/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.38 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To mislead (someone) into following a seemingly innocuous hyperlink, or sometimes a QR code, that leads to a YouTube video of Rick Astley's song "Never Gonna Give You Up".
Transitive verb
verb
To cause (someone) to unexpectedly engage with this song through an indirect method, such as through steganography, sheet music, or by inserting the lyrics into an unrelated context.
Transitive verb
verb
Alternative letter-case form of rickroll
verb
Alternative letter-case form of rickroll
verb
Alternative letter-case form of rickroll
noun
Alternative letter-case form of rickroll, particularly
Example Sentences
- "I try not to get rickrolled by sketchy YouTube links, but sometimes you let your guard down."
- "Once you start rickrolling people, and more importantly get a reputation for it, you're heading towards being the Zimbabwean dollar in the link economy: it doesn't matter how many you offer, people just aren't going to buy them."
- "Despite its name, there is one thing the Vote Leave campaign should not have left for so long: registering a domain name. The delay by the anti-EU organisation meant that up to 100,000 people who tried to access voteleave.com, co.uk or .net were rickrolled – redirected to a YouTube clip of Rick Astley's 1987 hit Never Gonna Give You Up. So far, so internet."
- "The DJ rickrolled the whole audience by suddenly playing Rick Astley’s hit song."
- "Two men on the sidelines surprised the crowd by blasting the British singer Rick Astley’s 1987 hit song “Never Gonna Give You Up” through the gym, while one, dressed as a look-alike in Mr. Astley’s signature trench coat, lip-synched and mugged to the music: a popular prank known as rickrolling."
- "With a single tap on its screen, the device can take over any one of the millions of televisions connected to a Google Chromecast digital media player that happens to be within Wi-Fi range and force it to play Astley's canonical “Never Gonna Give You Up” music video—or any other equally annoying or embarrassing YouTube clip of the prankster’s choosing. […] But [Dan] Petro nonetheless imagines a rickmote-wielding hacker moving slowly through around a dense residential area and wirelessly rickrolling one hapless Chromecast owner after another."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₃reǵ- Proto-Indo-European *-s Proto-Indo-European *h₃rḗǵs Proto-Celtic *rīxsbor. Proto-Germanic *rīks Proto-West Germanic *rīk Proto-Indo-European *kret-der.? Proto-Germanic *harduz Proto-Indo-European *-yos Proto-Indo-European *-yós Proto-Germanic *-jaz Proto-West Germanic *-ī Proto-West Germanic *hardu Proto-West Germanic *Rīkuhardu Old High German Rihhart Middle High German Rihardbor. Medieval Latin Richardusder. Old French Richardbor. Middle English Rycharde English Richardder. English Rick (Astley) Proto-Germanic *dūkaną Proto-West Germanic *dūkan Old English dū̆ce Middle English doke English duck English roll English duckroll blend English rickroll The verb is a blend of Rick + duckroll, combining the name of the British pop singer and songwriter Rick Astley (born 1966) with a reference to the duckroll prank on the website 4chan, in which users tricked into clicking on a hyperlink were led to an image of a duck on wheels. The word was coined by the American YouTuber Shawn Cotter (born 1987) who, under the handle “cotter548”, uploaded the music video of Astley’s song “Never Gonna Give You Up” (1987) to the online video-sharing service YouTube and then posted messages on 4chan on May 15, 2007 ostensibly with links to a trailer for the forthcoming game Grand Theft Auto IV. People who clicked on the links instead saw the Astley video with the caption “You just got Rickroll’d” scrolling across the screen. The noun is derived from the verb.
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈɹɪkˌɹoʊl/
- British English: /ˈɹɪkɹəʊl/