Yes, it’s that time in the year where we dutifully do a ‘whip round’ of all the world’s biggest dictionaries and report on what they judged to be their word (or sometimes, words) of the year.
And actually, it can be quite an accurate picture once you line up all of the words and phrases alongside each other. On that note, let’s give 2025 the lexicon-artist treatment, shall we?
Slop (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
Could any word describe a year better? Last year, ‘polarisation’ won out due to the election. (Well, actually ‘polarization’, because, America.) But in 2025, we were once more obsessed with AI (just like 2023) and in particular the alarming rate at which AI-generated content had infected the world.
Merriam-Webster defines ‘slop’ as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence” – and whether it’s fake news, talking cat videos or a stream of junk AI-written books, you couldn’t miss the stuff in 2025. Slop is synonymous with words like ‘muck’ and ‘sludge’ and is typically regarded as something of little value. And it shows no signs of slopping – oops, stopping.
By the way, The Economist (who last year hilariously and presciently picked ‘kakistocracy’ – a government run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens) also picked “slop” as their 2025 word.
AI Slop (Macquarie Dictionary)
And the slop doesn't stop there. Because even here in Australia, our own Macquarie Dictionary also had slop on their mind – announcing their word a full three weeks before Merriam-Webster. Okay, so they added “AI” to the front, but it’s essentially the same thing.
On the dictionary’s website, they stated: “While in recent years we’ve learnt to become search engineers to find meaningful information, we now need to become prompt engineers in order to wade through the AI slop. Slop in this sense will be a robust addition to English for years to come.”
We can’t wait.
Rage bait (Oxford University Press)
Please don’t get upset, but things don’t get a whole lot better over at Oxford, where they have followed up last year’s ‘brain rot’ with their pick of ‘rage bait’. (They really do love a two-word word.)
They define ‘rage bait’ as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media account”. And before you start screaming in the comment section, know that this wasn’t merely decided by a dozen boffins standing around the water cooler. This two-word word was in fact arrived at after polling (baiting?) 30,000 people.
67 (Dictionary.com)
Last year, this online dictionary named ‘demure’ their word following a Tik Tok trend. And it must be the whole online thing that makes them want to ‘get down with the kids’, because this year they were back with ‘67’ (pronounced six-seven of course, not sixty-seven).
Most parents of school-aged children will already have this odd slice of slang burned in their brains like a recorder recital. And older folk not knowing what it means is part of the fun for the youth of today (who, when pressed, admit that they also don’t know what it means and are simply following the trend.). Don’t forget to accompany it with the weighing-up-hands too.
Vibe coding (Collins Dictionary)
Here’s another dictionary not afraid to offer up two words – and this one, once more, has a lot to do with AI. Apparently, if you don’t already know, ‘vibe coding’ is an “emerging software development that turns natural language into computer code using AI” – in the process potentially sending millions of coders out of a job. What a vibe.
Other terms to make the Collins shortlist this year included ‘aura farming’ (the deliberate cultivation of a distinctive and charismatic persona), ‘biohacking’ (altering your body in an attempt to improve health and longevity) and ‘glaze’ – not just a gratuitous and sickly sweet coating on a doughnut but also a gratuitous and sickly sweet barrage of praise or flattery to excess. Mmmmm doughnuts.
Parasocial (Cambridge Dictionary)
Step back, the grown ups are entering the chat. Last year, while everyone was talking about brat summers and rawdogging, Cambridge brought some decorum to the proceedings with their word ‘manifest’. And this year, they don’t disappoint once more, with ‘parasocial’.
No, this does not describe a group of people with disabilities meeting for drinks on a Friday night. Instead, ‘parasocial’ relates to a connection that someone feels between themselves and a famous person they do not know, a character in a book, film, TV series, podcaster or even, yes, AI. This one-way relationship term is not new, but this year, conversations around relationships with artificial intelligence brought it back into the spotlight. (Something that the film Her predicted fairly accurately 12 years ago.)
Hey Siri, whatcha dooooooin?
