Meanings
plural infohazards
- literatureA piece of information which is directly harmful to one who knows it.
If a meme is any idea that gets in your head, then an "infohazard" is a meme that's actively harmful to its host.
2019 August 28, Fletcher Wortmann, “Infohazard Warning: How Internal Memes Infect Your Brain”, in Triggered, Psychology Today, archived from the original on 15 Nov 20211 more example
A basilisk, in this context, is information that can hurt you simply because you are aware of it. Yudkowsky uses the term 'infohazard'.
[2019 June 13, Tom Chivers, The AI Does Not Hate You, Orion Publishing Group, →ISBN - An information hazard; a piece of information which can be used to cause harm by one who knows it.
Origin
Blend of information + hazard or info + hazard. Analogous to biohazard and possibly modeled after it.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
infohazard. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/infohazard
“infohazard.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/infohazard. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “infohazard,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/infohazard.
Source: infohazard on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.