Merriam-Webster names ‘slop’ Word of the Year for 2025

Merriam-Webster has named “slop” its Word of the Year for 2025, citing the surge of low-quality and often fabricated digital content produced using artificial intelligence.

Announcing the selection on Dec 15, Merriam-Webster President Greg Barlow said the term captured the cultural moment shaped by rapid advances in artificial intelligence.

“It's such an illustrative word,” Barlow said. “It's part of a transformative technology, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and it's something that people have found fascinating, annoying, and a little bit ridiculous.”

Originally used in the 1700s to describe mud or watery refuse, the word has evolved to broadly mean content of little value.

Merriam-Webster has expanded its definition to include “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of AI.”

Barlow described “slop” as encompassing “you know, absurd videos, weird advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks real, and junky AI-written digital books.”

The rise of powerful AI tools, including video generators capable of producing realistic visuals from simple text prompts, has accelerated the spread of such content.

While these technologies have impressed users, they have also fueled concerns around misinformation, deepfakes, and copyright misuse, especially as manipulated images of celebrities and public figures circulate widely on social media.

According to Merriam-Webster, the surge in searches for the word signals growing public awareness of misleading or poorly made content. Barlow said this awareness may reflect a deeper desire for authenticity.

“They want things that are real; they want things that are genuine,” he said. “It's almost a defiant word when it comes to AI. When it comes to replacing human creativity, sometimes AI actually doesn't seem so intelligent.”

The Word of the Year is chosen based on analysis of search trends and usage data, followed by editorial review.

“We like to think that we are a mirror for people,” Barlow said, noting that commonly searched words are filtered to identify the one that best reflects the year.

Merriam-Webster has named a Word of the Year annually since 2003. In 2024, the dictionary selected “polarization,” reflecting political and social divisions following the U.S. presidential election.

The announcement comes as the publisher continues to update its lexicon to keep pace with social and technological change.

A new edition released last month added more than 5,000 new words, marking a major revision of one of its most widely used dictionaries.