Merriam-Webster has one word for 2025: “slop.”
The American dictionary defines slop as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.”
The human editors of the publisher said that the slop that dominated social media feeds this year 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.”
Slop sounds like something wet and damp that you wouldn’t want to touch, the dictionary said, and “oozes” into everything.
“All that stuff dumped on our screens, captured in just four letters: the English language came through again,” the company said. “People found it annoying, and people ate it up.”
But amid all the AI talk of 2025, slop expresses more of a mocking tone than anything threatening, sending a message to AI that it can’t replace human creativity.
The word of the year selection comes as multiple companies have been slammed for their AI-generated content that have been deemed “slop,” including McDonald’s Netherlands, Italian fashion house Valentino and Coca-Cola.
Merriam-Webster’s word of the year is selected largely based on search data spikes.
Other words and phrases that stood out in their 2025 data included gerrymander, touch grass, performative, tariff, conclave and six seven.
While not exactly a word that defined the year, the dictionary also highlighted Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. The lake “baffled” the editors when it was popping up in the dictionary’s online Top Lookups list. The lake in Massachusetts, also coincidentally called Webster Lake, appears in the hit Roblox game Spelling Bee.
Merriam-Webster might have acknowledged “six seven,” or “6 7,” as a standout — but Dictionary.com actually made it its word of the year.
The slang word has captivated Gen Alpha to the extent that teachers have started to ban it from schools. But what does it actually mean? Not much, Dictionary.com said.
“Perhaps the most defining feature of 67 is that it’s impossible to define,” the announcement read. “It’s meaningless, ubiquitous, and nonsensical.”
Dictionary.com described the phrase as “classic brainrot slang: purposefully nonsensical, endlessly remixable, and all about being in on the absurdity.”
Meanwhile, Oxford University Press announced “rage bait” is its 2025 word of the year. The prestigious publisher defines “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 content.”
The term “parasocial” was named Cambridge Dictionary’s 2025 word of the year, referring to when a person feels like they have a relationship with a famous person, despite not knowing them personally.
