Rickroll
noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 An act of or attempt at rickrolling. Internet, transitive
"You have to check out this link. Not a rickroll."
- 2 Alternative letter-case form of rickroll. alt-of
"I find some Rickrolls really funny. Have you seen the one with President Barack Obama? Someone has cut up his speeches and put them together so that he sings "Never Gonna Give You Up." It's totally amazing. I find it bonkers, by the way!"
- 1 To mislead (someone) into following a seemingly innocuous hyperlink, or sometimes a QR code, that leads to a YouTube video of Rick Astley's song "Never Gonna Give You Up". transitive
"I try not to get rickrolled by sketchy YouTube links, but sometimes you let your guard down."
- 2 Alternative letter-case form of rickroll. alt-of
"In 2008, Astley proved he was a good sport about the joke, interrupting a song on the float for "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends" to Rickroll the parade."
- 3 To surprise or trick (someone) into hearing this song. broadly, transitive
"The DJ rickrolled the whole audience by suddenly playing Rick Astley’s hit song."
- 4 To cause (someone) to unexpectedly engage with this song through an indirect method, such as through steganography, sheet music, or by inserting the lyrics into an unrelated context. broadly, transitive
"She inserted the lyrics of “Never Gonna Give You Up” into her speech so casually that most listeners didn’t even realize they’d been rickrolled."
Example
More examples"Did you really think you could Rickroll me just by sending me a link to the video?"
Etymology
The verb is a blend of Rick + duckroll, combining the name of the British pop singer and songwriter Rick Astley (born 1966) with a reference to the duckroll prank on the website 4chan, in which users tricked into clicking on a hyperlink were led to an image of a duck on wheels. The word was coined by the American YouTuber Shawn Cotter (born 1987) who, under the handle “cotter548”, uploaded the music video of Astley’s song “Never Gonna Give You Up” (1987) to the online video-sharing service YouTube and then posted messages on 4chan on May 15, 2007 ostensibly with links to a trailer for the forthcoming game Grand Theft Auto IV. People who clicked on the links instead saw the Astley video with the caption “You just got Rickroll’d” scrolling across the screen. The noun is derived from the verb.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.