Merriam-Webster's word of the year is "slop"

All the worthless stuff dumped on our screens, in just four letters

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Sloppy Award: The leading US publisher of English dictionaries and reference books has announced its word of the year, and it's all about AI. People tend to either embrace or despise "slop," but Merriam-Webster's choice is rooted more in mockery than enthusiasm.

"Slop" is Merriam-Webster's 2025 word of the year, and the company is quick to clarify that human editors did all the selecting. According to Encyclopedia Britannica's subsidiary, capturing the elusive, low-quality content flooding screens in recent years in a single four-letter word once again demonstrates the English language's ability to express complex ideas succinctly.

Merriam-Webster defines slop as "digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence." Netizens have encountered – or been forced to endure – vast amounts of slop in 2025, from absurd videos and pathetic advertising to propaganda, fake news, chatbot-written books, and countless other AI-generated creations. And yes, plenty of talking cats, too.

AI slop has profoundly altered the internet landscape, bringing the "dead internet theory" closer to reality and reshaping social media in unprecedented ways. Historically, the word slop first meant "soft mud" in the 1700s, and a century later it came to describe food waste, rubbish, or items of little value. Today, Merriam-Webster notes, the term has taken on renewed relevance for mocking the potential excesses and threats of AI technology.

In 2024, Merriam-Webster chose "polarization" as word of the year to highlight the extreme divisiveness in American politics and society. The 2023 selection, "authentic," was reportedly trending in online searches due to stories about AI, celebrities, and social media.

Merriam-Webster's picks illustrate just how fast we've gone from authentic to AI-generated slop in only two years. Some, including this human writer, find AI slop to be one of the most annoying developments in the history of technology, while others seem to consume the endless digital blobs without a second thought.

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Other dictionaries chose different words for their respective word of the year awards: vibe coding (Collins), parasocial (Cambridge), and rage bait (Oxford). These selections underscore that people now have a complicated – and often fraught – relationship with technology.

Before landing on slop, Merriam-Webster considered other contenders, including gerrymander, touch grass, performative, tariff, six seven, and conclave. If trends continue, words like bubble or burst could easily become strong candidates for 2026 or 2027.