^W

interjection

Delete that last word.

“Yeah, he's a real jerk^W civility-challenged fellow.”

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Meanings

interjection
  1. InternethumoroususuallyDelete that last word.

    Yeah, he's a real jerk^W civility-challenged fellow.

    1 more example

    Well, Mimi, you’re old enough that you should go to parties now, so this should be your last year to tickle feet^W^W trick-or-treat.

Origin

From the visual representation of the terminal encoding of the keypress Ctrl-W, the "delete back to whitespace" command in GNU readline, which is commonly available in GNU shells and other command-line utilities.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

^W. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/%5EW

MLA

“^W.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/%5EW. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “^W,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/%5EW.

Source: ^W on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.