rickroll

Meanings

1. To mislead (someone) into following a seemingly innocuous hyperlink, or sometimes a QR code, that leads to a YouTube video of Rick Astley's song "Never Gonna Give You Up".
2. To surprise or trick (someone) into hearing this song.
3. To cause (someone) to unexpectedly engage with this song through an indirect method, such as through steganography, sheet music, or by inserting the lyrics into an unrelated context.

1. An act of or attempt at rickrolling.

1. Alternative letter-case form of rickroll.

1. Alternative letter-case form of rickroll.

Etymology

The verb is a blend of Rick + duckroll, combining the name of the British pop singer and songwriter Rick Astley (born 1966) with a reference to the duckroll prank on the website 4chan, in which users tricked into clicking on a hyperlink were led to an image of a duck on wheels. The word was coined by the American YouTuber Shawn Cotter (born 1987) who, under the handle “cotter548”, uploaded the music video of Astley’s song “Never Gonna Give You Up” (1987) to the online video-sharing service YouTube and then posted messages on 4chan on May 15, 2007 ostensibly with links to a trailer for the forthcoming game Grand Theft Auto IV. People who clicked on the links instead saw the Astley video with the caption “You just got Rickroll’d” scrolling across the screen. The noun is derived from the verb.