HipDict is an Instagram "photo dictionary" that gives familiar words funny, brutally honest new definitions, and sometimes coins new ones. Each post looks like a page from an old printed dictionary: a bold headword, a part of speech in brackets and a one-line meaning that is closer to a joke or a confession than to anything a lexicographer would write. The thirty entries below are among its best-known cards.
The cover shows its definition of "Single", which appears again in full further down.
What is HipDict?
HipDict began as an offshoot of 8Fact, an app and social media brand built around short, shareable facts, before becoming its own separate page. It describes itself as crowdsourced: followers send in their own alternative meanings, and the best ones are turned into cards. By 2017 the account had close to two million followers on Instagram.
The format borrows the authority of a real dictionary. A neutral serif typeface, an "(n.)" or "(adj.)" label and a short definition make the reader expect a dry explanation, so the honest punchline lands harder. Writers have used the same trick for well over a century; Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary, published in 1906 as The Cynic's Word Book and renamed in 1911, is the most famous ancestor.
More info: HipDict on Instagram
Definitions about everyday habits
"Tomorrow: the best time to do everything you had planned for today." It is the classic procrastinator's motto, and research suggests it is very common: one estimate holds that more than 90% of college students put off work at some point.
"Procrastinate (v.): what you are doing right now", followed by a blunt, swearing order to get back to work. Psychologists describe procrastination less as laziness than as a way of avoiding unpleasant feelings linked to a task, which is why simply scolding yourself rarely helps.
"Study: the act of texting, eating and watching TV with an open textbook nearby." The joke is close to the truth: studies of multitasking consistently find that switching between screens slows learning down. (The card also misspells "textbook", a small irony for a dictionary.)
"Laziness: risking to drop everything you carry rather than walking twice." Anyone who has carried every shopping bag from the car in one trip will recognise it, even though the card itself contains two small slips of English.
"Calories: tiny creatures that live in your closet and sew your clothes a little bit tighter every night." In reality a calorie is a unit of energy, but blaming invisible tailors is far more comforting.
"Balanced diet: one cheeseburger in each hand." The joke plays on the literal meaning of "balanced"; nutritionists mean a mix of food groups, not equal weight on both sides.
"Feet: a device used for finding Legos in the dark." Stepping on a toy brick is such a universal pain that it has become a running joke online, and LEGO bricks are made of hard ABS plastic with sharp corners, which is why it hurts so much.
People and relationships
"Single: a man who makes jokes about women in the kitchen." It turns an old sexist joke back on the person telling it, which is why it became one of HipDict's most shared cards.
"Pets: the only members of your family you actually like." The joke works because so many people now describe their pets as family members.
"Best friends: the people you can get mad at only for a short period of time because you have important stuff to tell them." It is a warm definition dressed up as a complaint.
"Dentist: similar to parents, but they criticise your teeth instead of your lifestyle." Gentle teasing of dentists is an old tradition; the advice to floss is still worth following.
"Teacher: a person who helps you solve problems you'd never have without them." Students will laugh; teachers, who usually set the problems for a good reason, may laugh a little less.
"School reunion: a meeting where it takes only 20 seconds to realize why you haven't seen those people for 20 years." Reunions are a classic source of both nostalgia and dread, and the card picks the dread.
"College: where everyone is smarter than you except your group partners." Group projects are a near-universal student complaint, especially when one person does most of the work.
Phrases we use without meaning them
"I think so: I want to say yes, but don't want to be held accountable if the answer is no." Linguists call words like this hedges; they soften a statement and leave room to back out.
"That's nice: what you say when you're talking on the phone and you zone out in the middle of the other person's story." Most people have used a filler phrase like this, and most people on the other end can tell.
"Awkward: that moment when you realise no one's listening, so you slowly stop talking." The definition describes the feeling so exactly that it barely counts as a joke.
"Money can't buy happiness: a saying created by poor people to help curb their jealousy of the rich." Research is more nuanced. The economist Richard Easterlin found in 1974 that richer people tend to be happier at any one time, but that national happiness does not keep rising as incomes grow over the years, an idea now known as the Easterlin paradox and still debated.
"YOLO: You Only Live Once. 'Carpe diem' for stupid people." The acronym existed earlier, but it was the rapper Drake's 2011 song "The Motto" that made it a catchphrase, and its link with reckless stunts soon made it a target for jokes like this one.
Language jokes for word lovers
"Irony: drawing trees on paper." Paper is made from wood pulp, so a drawing of a tree on paper really is a small irony, or at least a nice coincidence.
"Synonym: a word used in place of the one you can't spell." A synonym is really a word with the same or a similar meaning, from the Greek for "together" and "name", but the definition describes a trick most writers have used.
"English: a language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary." This is a version of a well-known line usually credited to the science fiction reviewer James Nicoll, and it is fair: English has borrowed words from hundreds of languages.
"Bae" is usually explained as short for "babe" or "baby", a term of endearment that spread online in the 2010s. The card's joke is that "bæ" is reportedly a childish Danish word for poop, a fact Danish speakers enjoyed pointing out when the slang took off.
"Latte: Italian for 'you paid too much for that coffee'." In Italian, latte simply means milk, so ordering "a latte" in Italy gets you a glass of milk; the coffee drink is a caffè latte. (The card also misspells "coffee".)
"Irish handcuffs" is a slang phrase for holding a drink in each hand. It relies on an old stereotype about the Irish and drinking, so it is best kept for friends who will take it as a joke.
"Microwave" is redefined as a hand gesture used by a very short person to say hello. It is a pun on "micro", but the card uses the word "midget", which many people with dwarfism consider offensive, so it has aged worse than most of the set.
Technology and the brain
"Cell phone: a device used for looking less alone while in public places by yourself." Checking a phone while waiting alone is so common that it has become a social signal that you are busy, not lonely.
"Clapping: repeatedly high-fiving yourself for someone else's accomplishments." It is one of the cleverest cards in the series, because it describes applause in a way that is literally accurate and completely absurd.
"Immature: a word used by boring people to describe fun people." It is the definition most likely to be quoted by someone who has just been called immature.
"Brain: something we all have but most do not use." It echoes the old myth that we use only 10% of our brains. Brain scans show that all parts of the brain are active to some degree, even during sleep, so the myth is false, though the joke about not thinking things through is evergreen.
Why fake definitions feel so true
A good joke definition works because it captures what a word feels like in daily use rather than what it officially means. "Tomorrow" in a dictionary is just the day after today; in real life it is where unwanted chores go. That small gap between the formal meaning and lived experience is where HipDict finds its humour.
Not every card has aged equally well, and a few rely on stereotypes or spelling slips. But the best ones, like "Clapping", "Tomorrow" and "Feet", are clever enough to make you look at a familiar word in a new way. Which definition do you think is the most accurate?
Sources: HipDict on Instagram; Bored Panda: HipDict crowdsourced dictionary; Wikipedia: Procrastination; Wikipedia: Easterlin paradox; Wikipedia: YOLO; Wikipedia: Latte; Wikipedia: Synonym; Wikipedia: Ten percent of the brain myth; Wikiquote: James Nicoll; Wikipedia: Midget.
As to Laziness - you might wish to spell 'cary' carry as that is the way it is spelled.
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