Napster
noun, verb ·2 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Any website that facilitates free distribution of data. Internet
"Some in the used-book industry are questioning whether Amazon.com is becoming the Napster of the book business."
- 1 To download from Napster.
"I have done my part this year by buying fewer albums than in any year since, um, 1982 I think it was. No, I haven't been Napstering them, either. I'm catching up to my backlog of listening, listening to the radio, and most-of-all spending a lot of time with demos of friends' bands, and with the tapes I make of my live show every week."
- 2 To upload to or as if to Napster.
"Anyway, I noticed recently that somebody had Napstered the song, and I presume that tapes of the single were floating around long before the internet."
- 3 To shut down, especially for copyright infringement, as Napster was.
"Don't get me wrong. I am not interested in making that case myself with regard to Debian. On the contrary; I don't want to see Debian get Napstered. Putting obviously infringing stuff onto the mirror network is just begging for trouble. It's not like it's that hard for people to set up their own repositories; let them gamble with their own assets."
Example
More examples"Some in the used-book industry are questioning whether Amazon.com is becoming the Napster of the book business."
Etymology
Named after Napster, a file-sharing system (not itself a website) that facilitated the copying of copyrighted MP3 audio files, itself named after a nickname of its creator Shawn Fanning, referring to his nappy-textured hair; hence nap + -ster.
More for "napster"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.