folksonomy

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noun

The spontaneous cooperation of a group of people to organize information into categories; the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content.

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Meanings

nounfolksonomy (countable and uncountable, plural folksonomies)

plural folksonomies

  1. InternetuncountableThe spontaneous cooperation of a group of people to organize information into categories; the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content.
  2. InternetcountableA user-generated taxonomy.

    We imagined a microlibrary which would be a well organized digital collection of resources, focused specifically on our project, and employing both traditional library cataloging and organization, and the folksonomy made possible by user-generated tagging.

    2011, Charles Wankel, Educating Educators with Social Media, page 291

Origin

Blend of folk + taxonomy.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

folksonomy. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/folksonomy

MLA

“folksonomy.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/folksonomy. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “folksonomy,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/folksonomy.

Source: folksonomy on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.