Unusual paraphrases of established technical terminology that result from automated synonym substitution, often used to evade plagiarism detection. A phrase is tortured when a domain reader recognises it as a mangled rendition of a standard term.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A computer-science paper that consistently writes 'haze figuring' instead of 'cloud computing' and 'profound learning' instead of 'deep learning'.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
Non-standard terminology proposed in good faith by a new field, defined on first use, and used consistently.

Editorial commentary

Coined by Cabanac, Labbe and Magazinov (2021), tortured phrases serve as a forensic signature of machine-generated or machine-paraphrased text. Canonical examples include 'counterfeit consciousness' (artificial intelligence), 'irregular esteem' (random value), 'colossal information' (big data), 'profound learning' (deep learning), and 'mean square mistake' (mean square error). The 'Problematic Paper Screener' maintained by Cabanac et al. indexes tortured-phrase occurrences across the literature.

References

Cabanac, Labbe & Magazinov (2021) 'Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science'
Problematic Paper Screener (Cabanac et al., ongoing)

Also known as

torture phrases · tortured terminology · paraphrased nonsense

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Tortured phrases"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/tortured-phrases" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

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  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/tortured-phrases",
  "name": "Tortured phrases",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/tortured-phrases",
  "description": "Unusual paraphrases of established technical terminology that result from automated synonym substitution, often used to evade plagiarism detection. A phrase is tortured when a domain reader recognises it as a mangled rendition of a standard term.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-integrity#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/tortured-phrases",
  "sameAs": [
    "torture phrases",
    "tortured terminology",
    "paraphrased nonsense"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-05-21T02:22:52",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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