Antipattern

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A design pattern that may be commonly used, but is ineffective or counterproductive in practice.

    "If a Design Pattern gives you a general solution to a recurring problem in a particular context, then what does an anti-pattern give you? An Anti-Pattern tells you how to go from a problem to a BAD solution."

Synonyms

All synonyms
pitfall

Example

More examples

"If a Design Pattern gives you a general solution to a recurring problem in a particular context, then what does an anti-pattern give you? An Anti-Pattern tells you how to go from a problem to a BAD solution."

Etymology

From anti- + pattern, coined by Andrew Koenig in 1995.

Related phrases

design pattern

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.