Yep, you read that right. According to Merriam-Webster, 2025’s “Word of the Year” is “slop.”
Runners-up included gerrymander, performative, tariff, conclave six seven, and touch grass. The last of which is each two words strung together and not words, but I digress. Merriam-Webster chose “slop,” as in AI slop, as its 2025 word of the year.
“We define slop as ‘digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence,’” Merriam-Webster wrote in its December 14, 2025 announcement. “All that stuff dumped on our screens, captured in just four letters…”
We Did This: ‘Slop’ Is the 2025 Word of the Year.
“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. “People found it annoying, and people ate it up…”
“Like slime, sludge, and muck, slop has the wet sound of something you don’t want to touch. Slop oozes into everything.” Case in point, another “word” that made 2025’s list; you ready? Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. Yeah.
Just like TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year, Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year doesn’t necessarily endorse the chosen title, nor even view it as a positive thing. It gauges and highlights what has had the most significant impact on society.
At least Merriam-Webster says their “human editors have chosen slop as the 2025 Word of the Year,” which is good, because if AI had chosen it, then it’d have been an apparent conflict of interest.
Although it is a conflict of interest, have human editors chosen anthropocentric words? I think I need to lie down, which is a classic symptom after too much exposure to slop. At least Merriam-Webster took a hip shot at the word in its closing statement:
“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.”
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