'Slop' is Merriam-Webster’s 2025 Word of the Year
If you’ve been scrolling through endless low-quality content this year, Merriam-Webster 2025 Word of the Year sums it all up.
The online dictionary revealed that its editors have chosen "slop" as their Word of the Year, defining it as "digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence."
"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. People found it annoying, and people ate it up," Merriam-Webster explained.
They noted that the original sense of the word was "soft mud" back in the 1700s, but because of all the talk about artificial intelligence content in the last few months, the word has now evolved into a "product of little or no value."
"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 online dictionary said.
Other words that stood out in their lookup data are:
- Gerrymander - To divide a state, school district, etc. into political units or election districts that give one group or political party an unfair advantage
- Touch Grass - means “to participate in normal activities in the real world especially as opposed to online experiences and interactions”
- Performative - means “made or done for show (as to bolster one's own image or make a positive impression on others)”
- Tariff - refers to “a schedule of duties imposed by a government on imported or in some countries exported goods”
- Six Seven - emerged as the hit Gen Alpha slang term of 2025. It’s mostly used as an interjection—such as a thing you might chant, for no particular reason, after hearing the numbers 6 and 7
- Conclave - a meeting where Roman Catholic cardinals from around the world gather to select new popes