WYSIWYG

American

[wiz-ee-wig] / ˈwɪz iˌwɪg /

adjective

of, relating to, or noting a screen display that shows text exactly as it will appear in printed output, including underlining, various typefaces, as italics, line spacing, end-of-line breaks, and paragraph indentations.

noun

a WYSIWYG display.

This program won't give you true WYSIWYG, but it does show boldface text and underlining.

WYSIWYG British

/ ˈwɪzɪˌwɪɡ /

acronym

what you see is what you get: referring to what is displayed on the screen being the same as what will be printed out

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

WYSIWYG Scientific

/ wĭz′ē-wĭg′ /

Short for what you see is what you get. A word-processing or desktop publishing system in which text is displayed on a monitor exactly as it will be printed.

Etymology

Origin of WYSIWYG

w(hat) y(ou) s(ee) i(s) w(hat) y(ou) g(et)

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.

The earliest Macs popularized "what you see is what you get," or WYSIWYG; formatting on the screen largely reflected how the page would look in print.

From Seattle Times • Jan. 23, 2014

Describes a user interface under which "What You See Is All You Get"; an unhappy variant of WYSIWYG.

From The Jargon File, Version 4.2.2, 20 Aug 2000 by Steele, Guy L.

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023