plagiarism

American  

[pley-juh-riz-uhm, -jee-uh-riz-] / ˈpleɪ dʒəˌrɪz əm, -dʒi əˌrɪz- /

noun

plagiarisms plural

1. 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

2. 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.

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plagiarism British  

/ ˈpleɪdʒəˌrɪzəm /

noun

1. the act of plagiarizing

2. something plagiarized

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plagiarism Cultural  

1. Literary theft. Plagiarism occurs when a writer duplicates another writer's language or ideas and then calls the work his or her own. Copyright laws protect writers' words as their legal property. To avoid the charge of plagiarism, writers take care to credit those from whom they borrow and quote.

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Discover More

Similar theft in music or other arts is also called plagiarism.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• plagiarist
  noun
• plagiaristic
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• plagiarisms
  plural

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.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

plagiarism plagiarisms

The long plagiarism campaign sustained against him by Claire Goll, the widow of the poet Yvan Goll, struck at the ground on which this survivor-poet stood.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 5, 2026

Instead, the so-called autopsy was a shambolic train wreck of missing paragraphs, factual errors, and apparent plagiarism.

From Slate ● May 23, 2026

And so had Johnson, a 38-year-old former journalist who turned to social media after being embroiled in plagiarism scandals at BuzzFeed and the Independent Journal Review.

From Salon ● Apr. 15, 2026

The online service Grammarly originated in 2009 as a suite of tools to help ferret out plagiarism in schoolwork or help students hone their grammar and spelling.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 17, 2026

In a sense this process, given the fancy title ‘neo-classicism’ by music historians, was at times nothing more elaborate than plagiarism.

From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall

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

Now--after New York Times reporter Jayson Blair was caught in a string of plagiarisms and fabrications, ultimately leading to a staff revolt and the resignation of Times executive editor Howell Raines--it seems prescient.

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

The best known relationship between Goethe and Sterne is in connection with the so-called plagiarisms in the appendix to the third volume of the “Wanderjahre.”

From Laurence Sterne in Germany A Contribution to the Study of the Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Eighteenth Century by Hewett-Thayer, Harvey W. (Harvey Waterman)

Related Words

• falsification
• infringement
• piracy