Hazing is a ritualistic test and a task involving harassment, abuse or humiliation used as a way of initiating a person into a gang, club, military organization or other group. The definition can refer to either physical (sometimes violent) or mental (possibly degrading) practices. It may also include nudity or sexually oriented activities. The word "hazing" is most frequently encountered in the United States and Canada, and is often described in the context of Greek letter organizations (also known as fraternities and sororities). In some continental European languages, terms with a 'christening' theme or etymology are preferred (e.g. baptême in French, doop in Dutch in Flanders) or variations on a theme of naïveté and the rite of passage such as a derivation from a term for freshman (e.g. bizutage in French, ontgroening 'de-green[horn]ing' in Dutch) or a combination of both, such as in the Finnish mopokaste (literally "moped baptism", "moped" being the nickname for freshmen, stemming from the concept that they would be barred from riding a full motorcycle by their age). In Swedish, the term used is "nollning", literally 'zeroing'. In Spain, the term is "novatada" from "novato" meaning newcomer and in Portugal "praxe", which literally means "habit". Often most or all of the endurance, or at least the more serious ordeal, is concentrated in an orgiastic collective session, which may be called hell night, or prolonged to a hell week and/or retreat or camp, sometimes again at the pledge's birthday (e.g. by birthday spanking), but some traditions keep terrorizing pledges (a common term for the initiation candidates; alternative terms include newbie, rookie, mainly in athletic teams, and freshman) over a long period, resembling fagging. Hazing is often used as a method to seemingly promote group loyalty and camaraderie through shared suffering (male bonding in fraternities), either with fellow participants, past participants or both.

Francisco de Quevedo includes a scene of students hazing one another in his picaresque novel El Buscón (1626). In 1684, Joseph Webb was expelled from Harvard for hazing.

• Fraternity and Sorority (3)
• High School (2)
• Military (1)
• Sports (2)

• Is it Hazing or Teasing?
  isacs.org
  A sample school statement to parents on distinguishing hazing from teasing, written by Col. Ronald J. Kelly, President, Missouri Military Academy for the Independent Schools Association of the Central States (ISACS).
• Hazing, Scholarly Study
  units.muohio.edu
  Hazing Research as class project.
• Hazing Clearinghouse of Deaths and Incidents
  hazing.hanknuwer.com
  Unofficial clearinghouse to track hazing deaths and incidents by author of three books on hazing.