From AI Clutter to Viral Junk, Slop’ Is Merriam-Webster’s 2025 Word of the Year
If 2025 felt like a blur of bizarre videos, uncanny images and low-effort digital clutter, Merriam-Webster has a word for it. The dictionary publisher has named “slop” its word of the year.
Merriam-Webster defines the term as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” The publisher stated that it mirrors the growing presence of algorithm-driven material flooding online platforms.
“Like slime, sludge, and muck, slop has the wet sound of something you don’t want to touch. Slop oozes into everything. The original sense of the word, in the 1700s, was ‘soft mud.’ In the 1800s, it came to mean ‘food waste’ (as in ‘pig slop’), and then more generally, ‘rubbish’ or ‘a product of little or no value.'”
Editors pointed to “the absurd videos, off-kilter advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks pretty real, junky AI-written books” as examples of the kind of content that pushed the word into widespread use.
“All that stuff dumped on our screens, captured in just four letters: the English language came through again,” the company said.
“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 annual word selection is rooted in search behavior on merriam-webster.com, where sudden spikes often signal cultural flashpoints. That approach has previously led the dictionary to spotlight words closely tied to major events, including “pandemic” in 2020 and “vaccine” in 2021.
More recently, during the tumultuous election year, “polarization” was Merriam-Webster’s 2024 word of the year. “Search volume on Merriam-Webster.com throughout the year reflected the desire of Americans to better understand the complex state of affairs in our country and around the world,” the company stated.
While “slop” topped the list for 2025, it wasn’t the only term drawing attention. Merriam-Webster editors also cited heightened interest in words and phrases such as “gerrymander,” “touch grass,” “performative,” “tariff,” “six seven,” and “conclave.”
The dictionary also listed Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg due to it “clogging the Top Lookups list” on its website. The alternate name for Webster Lake in Massachusetts began trending after appearing on the online gaming platform Roblox.
“A bug in our code? Nope: in the hit Roblox game Spelling Bee, the lake’s name can be encountered either in ‘Master Mode’ or, for real connoisseurs, in ‘Charg Mode.’ While we admire those who learned the spelling and pronunciation of this New England attraction, we remain partial to its (coincidental) alternate name: Webster Lake.”
Another major dictionary publisher reached a similar conclusion about the year’s digital mood, though by a different process. Oxford University Press, which publishes the Oxford English Dictionary, factors public participation into its annual word selection alongside linguistic data.
For 2025, Oxford chose “rage bait,” defining it as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage.” The publisher said more than 30,000 people participated in the three-day public vote that helped determine the outcome.
“With 2025’s news cycle dominated by social unrest, debates about the regulation of online content, and concerns over digital wellbeing, our experts noticed that the use of rage bait this year has evolved to signal a deeper shift in how we talk about attention — both how it is given and how it is sought after — engagement, and ethics online.”
Oxford’s 2024 word of the year was “brain rot,” which it described as the “supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging.”
Taken together, the two selections reflect a shared anxiety about the online ecosystem, not just how much content people consume, but how it is produced, why it spreads, and what it does to attention in an increasingly algorithmic world.
Other dictionary publishers landed on a similar theme. Collins named “vibe-coding” its word of the year, while Cambridge chose “parasocial” and Dictionary.com selected “67.”
Moumita Basuroychowdhury is a Contributing Reporter at The National Digest. After earning an economics degree at Cornell University, she moved to NYC to pursue her MFA in creative writing. She enjoys reporting on science, business and culture news. You can reach her at moumita.b@thenationaldigest.com.