noun

GIF

GIF or JIF

GIF (noun) means a short, silent, looping animation used online to react, joke or demonstrate something. Example: “She replied to the invitation with a GIF of someone dancing on a table.”

noun

A short, silent, looping animation used online to react, joke or demonstrate something.

"She replied to the invitation with a GIF of someone dancing on a table."

"The tutorial includes a GIF showing each step of the setup."

technical An image file format that supports simple animation and a limited palette of colours, widely used on the web.

"Save the logo as a GIF if you need a transparent background and only a few colours."

verb

informal To turn a video clip into such an animation.

"Someone had already GIFed the moment before the match finished."

How to Use GIF

Learner’s notes

In plain EnglishA little looping video clip with no sound.

When to use it

Standard everywhere online. Both pronunciations, with a hard g as in gift and a soft g as in jam, are in wide use and neither is wrong.

Memory tip

Written in capitals as GIF, with the plural GIFs and no apostrophe.

Trace the full origin ↓

Easily confused with

JPEG → PNG → WebP →

Common pairings

send a GIF animated GIF reaction GIF GIF keyboard

Study it as flashcards or scroll it in Flow — saved to your collection.

Test yourself on “GIF” A quick quiz — meaning, synonyms & usage →

Fill the Gap

Can you complete this real example?

She replied to the invitation with a _____ of someone dancing on a table.

Etymology

An initialism of Graphics Interchange Format.

Origin: English

Rhymes for GIF

tgif

See all rhymes for GIF →

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it pronounced GIF with a hard or soft g?

Both are established and understood. The format's creator preferred the soft 'jif' pronunciation, but the hard g, matching the word graphics in the acronym, is now more common among ordinary users. Neither will cause confusion.

What is the difference between a GIF and a video?

A GIF has no sound, usually loops forever, and is stored as a sequence of images rather than compressed video, which makes it much larger for the same length. Many platforms now show what looks like a GIF but is actually a short muted video file underneath, precisely to save bandwidth.

What is the difference between GIF and PNG?

Both support transparency, but GIF can animate and is limited to 256 colours per frame, so photographs look banded. PNG holds millions of colours and gives cleaner still images, but it does not animate.

Featured In

Vocabulary lists that include GIF:

Words That End With F