Meanings
plural copypastas
- InternetcountableuncountableA block of text which has been copied and pasted from somewhere else, serving as a story or meme.First known use 2006
On the other paw, his further responses are generally rehashings (though not copypastas) of his original screed.
2008 January 6, Cory Albrecht, “Re: A treatise on how one willfully becomes an atheist”, in talk.origins (Usenet)5 more examples
Gikope is a really useful program for keeping up with AA and copypasta. I've rapidshared my own achieve, which includes 1000s of AAs and a large collection of copypasta.
2006 February 2, anonymous author, “GIKOPE COPYPASTA AND AA ARCHIEVE:”, in 4chan, retrieved 10 Sep 2013Our Father, who art in 4chan, Anonymous be thy name. Thy sage come, thy will be done on Gaia as it is in 4chan. Give us this day our copypasta, And forgive us our COMBO BREAKERs, as we forgive those who COMBO BREAK against us And lead us not into CP, but deliver us from Piro. For thine is the sandwich, and the win, and the awesome forever and ever. I guarantee it.
2006 June 7, Anonymous Addict, “4chan is broken again”, in Channel 4 BBS, archived from the original on 18 Jul 2007Almost everything posted on ARS [alt.religion.scientology] is copypasta from the original posted sources, i.e., web forums.
2009 March 4, "Quaoar", “Re: ARS is dead. Long live the trolls!”, in alt.religion.scientology (Usenet)It's essentially a (sort of) copypasta of *only the first page* of an article published in the St. Petersburg Times […]
2009 April 27, R. Hill, “St. Petersburg Times' _Man behind the religion_ 'copypasta' serves David Miscavige's agenda”, in alt.religion.scientology (Usenet)Mike Rugnetta […] explained that creepypasta derives from a term called "copypasta," which described any piece of text that was endlessly "copy-pasted" across the Internet. Creepypasta probably arose as a creepy form of copypasta around 2007, Mr. Rugnetta said, though it’s only recently become really popular.
2010 November 12, “Bored at Work? Try Creepypasta, or Web Scares”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 18 Apr 2022 - countableslanguncountablecomputingCode or documentation that has been copied and pasted, often erroneously.
Fix copypasta error in previous patch.
2011 February 1, Polytheus, “r288 committed - ChangeLog for system 6.2-rc1, boot 3.0”, in openetna (Usenet)4 more examples
There are a number of file systems that have copypasta of ufs_ihash; adapting these too to vcache should be a piece of cake.
2014 April 7, Taylor R. Campbell, “Vnode API change: add global vnode cache”, in fa.netbsd.tech.kern (Usenet)Perl's pod docs are a disorganized mess on the relation of hashes, packages, objects, references and globs. The tutorials never make it clear, and instead encourage copypasta.
2015 June 27, bulk 88, “documentation: do we want perlblurb?”, in perl.perl5.porters (Usenet)This [bug documentation] is copypasta from the initramfs-tools bug.
2016 April 5, Ben Hutchings, “Bug#820038: Copy signatures into udebs”, in linux.debian.maint.boot (Usenet)Something like 30% of large codebases on "big name" software projects by Google, Adobe, etc. have "copypasta errors" in code of the form like this, a shit-headed way to compare two arrays for reverse equality: if (array_1[9] == array_2[0] && array_1[8] == array_2[1] && […]
2019 February 18, bitrex, “Modern Math”, in sci.electronics.design (Usenet)
present singular third person copypastas · participle present copypastaing · participle past copypastaed · past copypastaed
- InternetuncommonTo copy and paste data from one website to another, usually text.
You didn't read the paper. You dully copypastaed the abstract. The abstract is not the paper.
2008 March 3, Rudy Canoza, “Re: Meat is a prominent part of chimpanzee diet; pre-human hominids ate meat for 2.25 million years (biologically adapted to meat)”, in alt.food.vegan (Usenet)2 more examples
Copypasta-ing from my last New Years Challenge, because I'm not feeling creative enough to come up with new teams (and really, I don't think I can top myself with the ones I did get together).
2008 November 4, dot_wa...@hotmail.com, “Re: [FLUFF] Omake challenge time...”, in rec.arts.anime.misc (Usenet)He probably meant what Bob Minton used to talk about in the post he used to copypasta and repost all the time […]
2009 September 7, "Voltaire's Child", “Re: Assuming it is all true..”, in alt.religion.scientology (Usenet)
Origin
Blend of copy-paste + pasta. Etymology tree Latin cōpiō Old French copierbor. Middle English copien English copy Ancient Greek πάσσω (pássō) Proto-Indo-European *-tós Proto-Hellenic *-tós Ancient Greek -τός (-tós) Ancient Greek παστός (pastós) Ancient Greek παστά (pastá)bor. Late Latin pasta Old French pastebor. Middle English paste English paste English copy-paste ▲ Late Latin pasta Italian pastabor. English pasta blend English copypasta
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Chinese Cantonese 潮文
- 潮文 (ciu⁴ man⁴)a block of text which has been copied and pasted from somewhere else
Chinese Mandarin 複製文 /复制文, 定型文
- 複製文 /复制文 (fùzhìwén)a block of text which has been copied and pasted from somewhere else
- 定型文 (dìngxíngwén)a block of text which has been copied and pasted from somewhere else
French copié-collé, copypasta
- copié-colléa block of text which has been copied and pasted from somewhere else
- copypastaa block of text which has been copied and pasted from somewhere else
- copié-merdécode or documentation that has been copied and pasted, often erroneously
Japanese コピペ
- コピペ (kopipe)a block of text which has been copied and pasted from somewhere else
Korean 복붙
- 복붙 (bokbut)a block of text which has been copied and pasted from somewhere else
Polish copypasta
- copypastaa block of text which has been copied and pasted from somewhere else
Portuguese copypasta
- copypastaa block of text which has been copied and pasted from somewhere else
Russian копипа́ста, копи́ровать
- копипа́ста (kopipásta)a block of text which has been copied and pasted from somewhere else
- копи́ровать (kopírovatʹ)to copy and paste data, usually text
- скопи́ровать (skopírovatʹ)to copy and paste data, usually text
- сдира́ть (sdirátʹ)to copy and paste data, usually text
- содра́ть (sodrátʹ)to copy and paste data, usually text
Spanish copipega, (texto) pegar
- copipegaa block of text which has been copied and pasted from somewhere else
- (texto) pegarto copy and paste data, usually text
- copipegarto copy and paste data, usually text
Ukrainian копіпаста
- копіпаста (kopipasta)a block of text which has been copied and pasted from somewhere else
Cite this entry
copypasta. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/copypasta
“copypasta.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/copypasta. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “copypasta,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/copypasta.
Source: copypasta on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.