‘Slop’ crowned Merriam-Webster word of the year, defining era of AI-generated content
It's messy, it's meaningless and it's everywhere: "slop" has been crowned as Merriam-Webster's 2025 Word of the Year.
The dictionary defines the term as "digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence."
In the announcement, Merriam-Webster said that the word slop originated in the 1700s to mean "soft mud" before the meaning evolved to "food waste" in the 1800s and, eventually, "rubbish" and "a product of little or no value" in colloquial terminology.
"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," Merriam-Webster said in their announcement. "People found it annoying, and people ate it up."
Runners-up for Merriam-Webster's 2025 Word of the Year include "gerrymander," "touch grass," "performative," "tariff," "six seven," "conclave" and "Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg," which is an actual lake in the town of Webster, Massachusetts, that's also known by the easier-to-pronounce Webster Lake.
Merriam-Webster's 2024 Word of the Year was "polarization," which the dictionary defines as "division into two sharply distinct opposites; especially, a state in which the opinions, beliefs, or interests of a group or society no longer range along a continuum but become concentrated at opposing extremes.”
Earlier this year, Oxford University Press chose "rage bait" as its word of the year, while Dictionary.com picked the meme "67."
