Words of 2025

In this year’s end of year word list, there were 2 main themes: Digital Media and AI, but there was one surprising entry that wasn’t really about either. Here are 5 major English dictionaries’ words of the year:

VIBE CODING /ˈvʌɪb ˌkəʊdɪŋ/

Collins Dictionary’s choice is perhaps the only word alluding to a potentially positive use of AI and its ability to bring ideas to life quickly.

PARASOCIAL /ˌparəˈsəʊʃl/

Cambridge’s choice describes connections between humans and people or machines they will never meet. Think PARANORMAL but on social media – the PARA prefix in the Greek sense of ‘beyond’ or ‘unusual’.

RAGE BAIT /ˈreɪdʒ ˌbeɪt/

Oxford went with this compound which has similarities with another fairly new one – CLICKBAIT, but the obvious difference being that this content is also designed to make you angry.

SIX-SEVEN /ˌsɪks ˈsɛvn/

Dictionary.com broke the mould with a Gen Alpha word that went viral this year. Nobody knows what it means, but that’s the entire point, isn’t it?

SLOP /slɒp/

Merriam Webster’s choice describes low quality content generated quickly by AI. It has a certain onomatopoeic quality and will have a different vowel in American – /slɑp/.