Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A collection of metatags generated by users of a particular website that together create a taxonomy that categorizes the content of that website.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Internet The spontaneous cooperation of a group of people to organize information into categories; the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content; a user-generated taxonomy.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Coined in 2004 by Thomas Vander Wal, American information architect, as a blend of folk and taxonomy.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Blend of folk and taxonomy

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word folksonomy.

Examples

  • Whether "folksonomy" is Greek to you or you've been tagging your bookmarks in del.icio.us since back in the day, this session will deliver insight into the broad concepts involved with social classification as well as examining nuts-and-bolts practical applications.

    Stephen's Lighthouse: SirsiDynix Institute on Social Bookmarking 2007

  • Whether "folksonomy" is Greek to you or you've been tagging your bookmarks in del.icio.us since back in the day, this session will deliver insight into the broad concepts involved with social classification as well as examining nuts-and-bolts practical applications.

    Stephen's Lighthouse: November 2007 Archives 2007

  • In technical terms a folksonomy is just a collection of tag assignments:

    A Moot of Folksonomies glyn moody 2007

  • They rely heavily on what's called folksonomy, or popular classification, instead of taxonomy, or centralized/official classification.

    Social Bookmarking 2005

  • A folksonomy is a simple way for people to reference things so that they can find those things later within a given context.

    The Rise of Amateur Conferences Chris Heuer 2005

  • Steve Rubel notes that there's a debate at the online encyclopedia Wikipedia about a new listing for the word folksonomy, which it defines as "a neologism for a practice ... iPod

    Tech Beat - BusinessWeek 2009

  • Steve Rubel notes that there's a debate at the online encyclopedia Wikipedia about a new listing for the word folksonomy, which it defines as "a neologism for a practice ... iPod

    Tech Beat - BusinessWeek 2009

  • Keywords - The degenerate case of a folksonomy is a simply flat list of strings.

    Site Home ecmblog 2010

  • Read on for immediate simulated life examples, instructions for deployment, and the initial tag folksonomy for the Haiti disaster.

    /message 2010

  • Read on for immediate simulated life examples, instructions for deployment, and the initial tag folksonomy for the Haiti disaster.

    /message 2010

  • Tagging systems were “folksonomies:” chaotic, self-organizing categorization schemes that grew from the bottom up.

    What Happened to Tagging? | JSTOR Daily Alexandra Samuel 2019

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • I love the concept--I love to consider how things can be classified--I once thought of being an indexer, but I am afraid it would have driven me over the edge.

    June 14, 2007

  • There is something compulsive about tagging!

    October 6, 2007

  • Great word, and sounds like a song by Prince. But it's not.

    November 9, 2009