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Merriam-Webster’s Word Of The Year 2025 Is Our Favourite
Oxford Dictionary went with “rage bait” as its ‘word of the year’ – a term that describes deliberately divisive content.
Meanwhile Collins Dictionary’s pick was “vibe coding”, a term coined by AI enthusiasts who think that technology will make plain speech prompts a programming language.
And Cambridge Dictionary went for “parasocial”, or a one-sided relationship people may have with a celeb, social media star, or even an AI bot.
But if you ask me, Merriam-Webster’s pick – the most fashionably late of them all – is best.
They went for “slop”, a word they define in this case as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence”.
Why ‘slop’?
“The flood of slop in 2025 included absurd videos, off-kilter advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks pretty real, junky AI-written books, ‘workslop’ reports that waste coworkers’ time… and lots of talking cats,” according to the dictionary.
“People found it annoying, and people ate it up.”
Like it or loathe it, they argue, the digital sludge is hard to ignore.
“Slop oozes into everything,” Merriam-Webster said.
But they don’t seem to see the content as a source of existential dread.
“In 2025, amid all the talk about AI threats, slop set a tone that’s less fearful, more mocking. The word sends a little message to AI: when it comes to replacing human creativity, sometimes you don’t seem too superintelligent.”
The company, whose ad this year seemed a little dismissive of AI promises, is perfectly in line with the entry.
What were the other options for Merriam-Webster’s 2025 word of the year?
The dictionary’s other picks included “gerrymander”, “touch grass”, “performative”, “tariff”, and “six seven”.
That last option refers to Gen Alpha’s fixation with the numbers, which in many ways means nothing at all.
They also considered “conclave” following Pope Francis’ death earlier this year.
Yet another possible pick was “Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg,” a term which “baffled” the publication after searches for it began clogging their system.
This, it turns out, happened because it’s a particularly tricky challenge for those playing popular game Roblox’s spelling bee mini-game.
