plagiarism

[ pley-juh-riz-uhm, -jee-uh-riz- ]

noun

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.

plagiarism

/ ˈpleɪdʒəˌrɪzəm /

noun

1. the act of plagiarizing
2. something plagiarized

plagiarism

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.

Notes

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

Derived Forms

• ˌplagiaˈristic, adjective
• ˈplagiarist, noun

Other Words From

• plagia·rist noun
• plagia·ristic adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of plagiarism¹

First recorded in 1615–25; plagiar(y) + -ism

Example Sentences

Where is the line between creativity and plagiarism?

From Los Angeles Times

Separately, last month Forbes threatened legal action against AI startup Perplexity, accusing it of plagiarism.

From Los Angeles Times

“My material, my cast of characters, my keywords, my hot buttons — they take everything,” Mr. Blair said of the recent plagiarism.

From New York Times

Instead, researchers say, such “tortured acronyms” are likely the work of software that altered earlier wording—“convolutional neural network” in this case—to disguise plagiarism, while neglecting to change the acronym.

From Science Magazine

And while many large language models, including OpenAI’s Chat GPT and Meta’s Llama, scrub the internet for training data without permission, Google’s overview feature appears to be pretty blatant in its plagiarism.

From Salon

Related Words

• falsification
• infringement
• piracy