noun, phrase ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A type of software that maintains a close correspondence between the screen image and the printed image.

   "WYSIWYGs are helpful tools in that they enable you to create pages much more quickly"

Adjective

1. 1
   relating to or being a word processing system that prints the text exactly as it appears on the computer screen wordnet

Phrase

1. 1
   Acronym of what you see is what you get. abbreviation, acronym, alt-of
2. 2
   Alternative letter-case form of WYSIWYG. alt-of
3. 3
   Alternative letter-case form of WYSIWYG. alt-of

Synonyms

All synonyms

what you see is what you getwhat you see is what you get

Example

More examples

"WYSIWYG stands for "What You See Is What You Get.""

Etymology

Coined by computer typesetter John W. Seybold and popularized at Xerox PARC during the late 1970s.

Related phrases

what you see is what you get

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