plagiarism
Americannoun
-
plagiarisms
plural
-
an act or instance of using or closely imitating the language and thoughts of another author without authorization and the representation of that author's work as one's own, as by not crediting the original author.
It is said that he plagiarized Thoreau's plagiarism of a line written by Montaigne.
- Synonyms:
- cribbing, borrowing, theft, piracy, infringement, appropriation
-
a piece of writing or other work reflecting such unauthorized use or imitation.
“These two manuscripts are clearly plagiarisms,” the editor said, tossing them angrily on the floor.
noun
-
the act of plagiarizing
-
something plagiarized
Discover More
Similar theft in music or other arts is also called plagiarism.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of plagiarism
First recorded in 1615–25; plagiar(y) + -ism
Explanation
When you rip off someone else's ideas or work and pretend it's your own, that's plagiarism. There's a fine line between borrowing and stealing — between plagiarism and theft — and it's often open to debate what actually constitutes an outright taking of someone's material. As Einstein once said, "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." From the Latin word for "kidnapped," when you plagiarize, you are being an intellectual thief, kidnapping someone else's ideas or words for your own purposes.
Vocabulary lists containing plagiarism
Jim Burke's Academic Vocabulary List
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TEKS ELAR Academic Vocabulary List (5th-7th grades)
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Computer Science and Technology - Introductory
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Arday - who became the university's youngest black professor when appointed in 2023 - had faced weeks of media coverage over plagiarism allegations and questions about his achievements.
From BBC ● Aug. 17, 2026
Arday, 41, resigned as a Cambridge professor of sociology of education last week after allegations of plagiarism and questions about some of his achievements.
From BBC ● Aug. 15, 2026
Black academic Jason Arday, who resigned from the University of Cambridge last week amid a high-profile plagiarism storm that featured racism claims, was found dead Friday, the prestigious British institution confirmed.
From Barron's ● Aug. 14, 2026
The row first erupted after another academic - self-defined "race realist" Nathan Cofnas, who was sacked from his Cambridge role in 2024 - said he found numerous instances of plagiarism in Prof Arday's work.
From BBC ● Aug. 14, 2026
Surely the similarities were inadvertent, he suggested, since Jackson was obviously a virtuous man and thus incapable of plagiarism.
From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis
That a lot of these supposed plagiarisms were things in speeches, or I guess also in books.
From Slate ● Nov. 12, 2013
I doubt that a single person could track down all the plagiarisms in QR Markham's spy novel Assassin of Secrets; but a group certainly could and did, and with remarkable speed.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 3, 2012
Mrs. Sheridan, who has read the book, finds it a display of sentimentality, abounding in super-adjectives, containing many plagiarisms, "the outpourings of a gushing school girl."
From Time Magazine Archive
Dickens' novels are hardly less theatrical, as his contemporaries realized to their quick profit: several stage plagiarisms of Nicholas Nickleby were on the London boards before the novel's serial publication was complete.
From Time Magazine Archive
In the United States, in addition to some merely impudent plagiarisms, several excellent efforts after improved printing were inspired by the English movement of which Morris was the most prominent figure.
From Fine Books by Alfred W. (Alfred William) Pollard
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
