Sourceless

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Without a source. not-comparable

    "Wikipedia-derived factoids can be so important that there is a well-known feedback loop, called citogenesis, in which the mainstream news finds some claim made in a Wikipedia article, and publishes it (without citing Wikipedia). Then Wikipedia itself makes use of the news article. By means of this loop, an ultimately “sourceless” factoid gains a spurious authority."

Example

More examples

"Wikipedia-derived factoids can be so important that there is a well-known feedback loop, called citogenesis, in which the mainstream news finds some claim made in a Wikipedia article, and publishes it (without citing Wikipedia). Then Wikipedia itself makes use of the news article. By means of this loop, an ultimately “sourceless” factoid gains a spurious authority."

Etymology

From source + -less.

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