Merriam-Webster names 'slop' as its 2025 word of the year

After yet another year of high-profile news stories and internet trends, Merriam-Webster has chosen one word to sum up 2025: “slop.”The dictionary publisher defined it as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence” and said it reflected the “absurd videos, off-kilter advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks pretty real, junky AI-written books” that have invaded people's social media feeds this year.“All that stuff dumped on our screens, captured in just four letters: the English language came through again,” the company said

After yet another year of high-profile news stories and internet trends, Merriam-Webster has chosen one word to sum up 2025: “slop.”

The dictionary publisher defined it as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence” and said it reflected the “absurd videos, off-kilter advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks pretty real, junky AI-written books” that have invaded people's social media feeds this year.

“All that stuff dumped on our screens, captured in just four letters: the English language came through again,” the company said.

Other words and phrases that stood out for Merriam-Webster's editors were: “gerrymander,” “touch grass,” “performative,” “tariff,” “six seven” and “conclave.”

The company also gave a shoutout to Lake Char­gog­ga­gogg­man­chaug­ga­gogg­chau­bu­na­gun­ga­maugg, an alternative name for Webster Lake in Massachusetts, which began appearing in the most-searched list of words on merriam-webster.com thanks to its appearance in the online gaming world Roblox.