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zalgo

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Zalgo¹

Where it comes from

Said to have been coined in 2004 by Dave “Shmorky” Kelly as the name of a mysterious malevolent entity appearing in webcomics and creepypasta.

noun

  1. Internet, uncountable In full Zalgo text: digital text to which random Unicode diacritics have been copiously applied, obscuring the text, often protruding out of expected text boundaries, and imparting a "cursed" feeling. See also: heavy metal umlaut

    Similar: glitch text

proper noun

  1. humorous A notional entity said to be "released" due to unpredictable program behaviour resulting from an API's inconsistent use of synchronous versus asynchronous operations. Anyway. My personal opinion is that people are making a bigger deal about it than it needs to be. Just be aware that there could maybe potentially be an issue in your app if you release Zalgo, but don't spend the hours going through and wrapping everything in nextTick just to say you are Zalgo-free

zalgo²

noun

  1. uncountable Alternative letter-case form of Zalgo

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Cite this
MLA

"zalgo." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/zalgo. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

zalgo. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/zalgo

Chicago

"zalgo." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/zalgo.

BibTeX
@misc{zalgo_2026,
  title = {zalgo},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/zalgo},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}