go viral

verb

To be rapidly and frequently shared, especially through social media, but (with retroactive application to pre-internet occurrences) also via gossip or as a collective response to broadcasting or widespread print circulation.

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Meanings

verbgo viral (third-person singular simple present goes viral, present participle going viral, simple past went viral, past participle gone viral)

present singular third person goes viral · participle present going viral · past went viral · participle past gone viral

  1. human sciencesTo be rapidly and frequently shared, especially through social media, but (with retroactive application to pre-internet occurrences) also via gossip or as a collective response to broadcasting or widespread print circulation.

    A group of girls from Norway asked me why their videos weren’t going viral like the ones from their American peers.

    2020 May 8, Louise Matsakis, “The Year the Internet Thought I Was MacKenzie Bezos”, in Wired
    4 more examples

    Hundreds of long-forgotten texts that went viral in the 19th century are being discovered by a new collaboration of humanities scholars and computer scientists.

    2013 November 4, Greg Miller, “Here's How Memes Went Viral — In the 1800s ”, in Wired, retrieved 16 Feb 2022

    After watching hours of these videos, I realized there’s no use trying to make sense of any one of them, but taken as a body of work, they tell a story: the struggles of a person trying to go viral again.

    2020 January 29, Dan Brooks, “Comedy Written for the Machines”, in New York Times Magazine

    Li Lina, a resident in the Hanyang district, beat a gong and shrieked from her high-rise balcony this weekend to beg for help for herself and her stricken mother holed up at home. A neighbor filmed her cries and uploaded it to the Internet, where it went viral.

    2020 February 9, Gerry Shih, “Coronavirus deaths climb as China corrals sick in quarantine facilities in outbreak epicenter”, in The Washington Post, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 09 Feb 2020, Asia & Pacific

    “Once you know how to make a video go viral, it’s just about how to get as many out as possible,” he told Bloomberg in December. “You can practically make unlimited money.”

    2021 May 4, Taylor Lorenz, quoting Mr. Beast, “Mr. Beast, YouTube Star, Wants to Take Over the Business World”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

Origin

The sociologic phenomenon was named thus because it is analogous to the way in which viruses propagate, with exponential potential. This phrasal verb developed in the late 20th or early 21st century as a name for a phenomenon that has existed since humans became capable of exposing one another to ideas in highly contagious ways; thus, gossip and rumor in close-quartered populations, print circulation, and broadcasting were all enough to produce it, but the advent of the internet, and more specifically the web era and smartphone era, provided many new instances and the occasion to bestow a name on the theme. See also meme, a word coined in 1976 for a phenomenon as old as human interaction.

Full word history & related roots →

Translations

Catalan viralitzar-se
  • viralitzar-seto be rapidly shared
Chinese Mandarin 爆紅 /爆红
  • 爆紅 /爆红 (bàohóng)to be rapidly shared
Dutch viraal gaan, viral gaan
  • viraal gaanto be rapidly shared
  • viral gaanto be rapidly shared
Finnish levitä, levitä netissä
  • levitäto be rapidly shared
  • levitä netissäto be rapidly shared
French viraliser
  • viraliserto be rapidly shared
German viral gehen, viral werden
  • viral gehento be rapidly shared
  • viral werdento be rapidly shared
Italian viralizzare
  • viralizzareto be rapidly shared
Malay menular
  • menularto be rapidly shared
Portuguese viralizar
  • viralizarto be rapidly shared
Romanian deveni viral
  • deveni viralto be rapidly shared
Russian вируси́ться, завируси́ться
  • вируси́ться (virusítʹsja)to be rapidly shared
  • завируси́ться (zavirusítʹsja)to be rapidly shared
Spanish viralizarse, volverse viral
  • viralizarseto be rapidly shared
  • volverse viralto be rapidly shared
  • hacerse viralto be rapidly shared
Ukrainian віруси́тися, завіруси́тися
  • віруси́тися (virusýtysja)to be rapidly shared
  • завіруси́тися (zavirusýtysja)to be rapidly shared
Cite this entry
APA

go viral. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/go%20viral

MLA

“go viral.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/go%20viral. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “go viral,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/go%20viral.

Source: go viral on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.