hashtag

noun

hash·​tag ˈhash-ˌtag 

plural hashtags

: a word or phrase preceded by the symbol # that classifies or categorizes the accompanying text (such as a tweet)

You know a thing is really a thing these days when it has its own hashtag. And there it was last week, trending on Twitter alongside #cincodemayo and #happymothersday: #umpshow, which sprang up in the wake of some shockingly bad umpiring over the first six weeks of the major league season.

—Joe Sheehan

It's also true that a popular hashtag can benefit important and worthy subjects, such as the recently kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls.

—Mark Leibovich

also : the symbol # as used in a hashtag

Did you know?

Hashtags are an everyday part of Internet culture, thanks to social media. Originally designed for categorizing posts (i.e., tagging them) on Twitter, hashtags now commonly also supplement or comment on whatever text or image they accompany. The “hash” in hashtag is short for hash mark, a term for what we also call a pound sign or, if you want to apply the word-nerdiest designation, an octothorpe. Hash in this case is probably an alteration of hatch, a term for the lines artists sometimes use to add shading to a drawing. #WordNerdery

Examples of hashtag in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

One hashtag, #USChinaSuspending24%TariffsWithin90Days, already has 420 million views on Weibo. —Eunice Yoon,erin Doherty, CNBC, 12 May 2025

By that point, the club’s two-minute reveal video had logged more than eight million views and its new hashtag, #TusksUp, had already been used more than 20,000 times, according to team sources. —Carol Schram, Forbes.com, 9 May 2025

That’s a tough job, given the way time has trained us to presume absolute guilt in such situations; the affair takes place in 2014, a few years before #MeToo acquired its hashtag. —Jesse Green, New York Times, 9 May 2025

And people are increasingly interested in this content; according to TikTok, the hashtag #budgemeals saw 64.3K posts, a 20 percent jump from March 16 through April 15. —Marni Rose McFall, MSNBC Newsweek, 6 May 2025

Word History

First Known Use

2007, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for hashtag

• airbag
• handbag
• ragtag
• sandbag
• ag
• bag
• brag
• dag
• drag
• flag
• gag
• hag

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Kids Definition

hashtag

noun

hash·​tag

ˈhash-ˌtag

: a word or phrase preceded by the symbol # that classifies or categorizes the accompanying text (as a tweet)