Urban Dictionary
"Urban Dictionary is the slang dictionary you wrote. Define your world"—Urban Dictionary
"A place formerly used to find out about slang, and now a place that teens with no life use as a burn book to whine about celebrities, their friends, etc., let out their sexual frustrations, show off their racist/sexist/homophobic/anti-(insert religion here) opinions, Troll, and babble about things they know nothing about."—Urban Dictionary's main definition of itself.
Created in 1999 by a college student named Aaron Peckham, the Urban Dictionary combines "anyone can add information" with a dictionary. It has currently recorded over four million words and phrases, mostly slang or slang usage. New words, definitions, and examples are submitted and then approved by the votes of both users and visitors. After that, the new additions are displayed for the world to see, forever. As definitions are prioritised by cumulative number of votes, an outdated and wrong definition (which was accurate when submitted years ago) will invariably outrank a new, corrected definition (which has had less time to gather votes, up or down).
Many of the terms defined are derogatory or describe sexual acts, so The Urban Dictionary is not exactly something a child should browse through unsupervised. It also gives personal opinions by contributors on certain subjects (bands, movies, books...), with contributors rarely considering the opinions of others. It can be useful for finding out how an unknown term is used, but don't trust it blindly; a significant fraction of the definitions are made up by the person contributing them.
Urban Dictionary can be found here.
- Author Tract: More like "contributor tract" that is, most of the definitions tend to be personal opinions of the contributor.
- Accidental Pun: An eigenpun.
- Freud Was Right: They will somehow make any word related to sex.
- GIFT
- He-Man Woman Hater: The most popular definition for "evil".
- Hollywood Atheist: Looking at the definitions for "atheism," some contributors are this. *Head Desk*
- Mary Sue: The definitions for just about any given name will include at least one entry of the form "those with this name are inevitably brilliant, lovable and beautiful" which will just as predictably have been created by someone with the name, as an Author Avatar. It gets repetitive very quickly.
- Not Safe for Work
- Popularity Power
- Refuge in Vulgarity
- Self-Deprecation: The most popular definition of "Urban Dictionary" as shown on top of this page.
- Sophisticated As Hell: A great many of the definitions are written this way.
- Take That: Many definitions are this.
- Troll: Many contributors are these.
- Viewers are Morons/Take That, Audience!: The first definition for "stupid"
- Unreliable Narrator: Most of the definitions are way biased.