English words of the year 2025
Welcome to the fifth consecutive words-of-the-year post — my way of saying goodbye to the previous year here on the blog.
Before we take a look at the words chosen by the leading lexicographers from the English-speaking world, can you think of any words that had a special significance for you in 2025, either English or from other languages? I’d love to hear about them, so please do post a comment below the post!
It’s only fair to share mine: mayhap. It was on New Year’s Eve that I finished reading Anne Brontë’s fabulous 1848 novel “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall”, which I thoroughly enjoyed. And among all sorts of dated words I encountered there, mayhap has stuck with me as one I’d love to see used again.
Mayhap simply means ‘perhaps’, ‘maybe’. It was formed by combining the modal verb may and the lovely archaic noun hap — ‘chance’, ‘fortune’.
Now, from my retro perspective on to the more forward-looking dictionaries of contemporary English!
Collins | VIBE CODING
Starting with the Collins Dictionary, their Word of the Year 2025 was vibe coding, defined as follows: “the use of artificial intelligence prompted by natural language to assist with the writing of computer code.” The publisher credited Andrej Karpathy, the founding engineer at OpenAI, for popularising the term, using it to describe “how AI enables creative output while he could forget that the code even exists.”
If you don’t care much for AI and the related terminology, you might like some of their shortlisted words more:
- aura farming: the deliberate cultivation of a distinctive and charismatic persona
- biohacking: the activity of altering the natural processes of one’s body in an attempt to improve one’s health and longevity
- broligarchy: a small clique of very wealthy men who exert political influence
- clanker: a derogatory term for a computer, robot, or source of artificial inteligence
- coolcation: a holiday in a place with a cold climate
- glaze: to praise of flatter someone excessively or undeservedly
- henry: acronym for high earner, not rich yet; a person who has not accrued substantial wealth from their high income
- micro-retirement: a break taken between periods of employment in order to pursue personal interests
- taskmasking: the act of giving a false impression that one is being productive in the workplace
Dictionary.com | 67
You’ve probably expected this one, as six-seven was one of biggest and most absurd global social phenomena of 2025. Defined by Dictionary.com as ultimately undefinable, meaningless, and nonsensical, “67” is interpreted as typical brainrot (which, incidentally, was one of Dictionary.com’s shortlisted WOTY 2024).
Among the shortlisted words are aura farming, broligarchy, and clanker, that we’ve already seen; and here are the other ones — not all of which are actual words, mind you:
- agentic: (of AI) capable of acting independently to accomplish a goal or task; acting like a human agent
- [dynamite emoji]: denoting “explosive” energy or “bombshell” news
- Gen Z stare: a vacant look that Zoomers are said to give people when it seems like a response is warranted
- kiss cam: a popular feature at stadium events (especially sporting events and concerts) in which two spectators, presumed to be a couple, are shown on a large screen and encouraged to kiss for the audience’s entertainment
- overtourism: a situation in which too many tourists travel to a popular destination, causing the place to suffer negative environmental, economic, and sociocultural impacts
- tariff: an official list or table showing the duties or customs imposed by a government on imports or exports
- tradwife: a married woman who chooses to be a homemaker as a primary occupation and adheres to or embodies traditional femininity and female gender roles, often associated with conservative or alt-right political values
Merriam-Webster | SLOP
Editors of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary chose slop as the Word of the Year 2025. While the word isn’t new (it’s a synonym for rubbish, among other things), the particular use that drew their attention happens to be connected with AI, namely: “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” I loved this part of the explanation: “Like slime, sludge, and muck, slop has the wet sound of something you don’t want to touch. Slop oozes into everything. The original sense of the word, in the 1700s, was ‘soft mud.’ In the 1800s it came to mean ‘food waste‘ (as in ‘pig slop’), and then more generally, ‘rubbish’ or ‘a product of little or no value.’”
And here are the shortlisted words; you’ll be able to recognise social and political events lurking behind them:
- gerrymander: to divide or arrange (a territorial unit) into election districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage
- touch grass: to participate in normal activities in the real world especially as opposed to online experiences and interactions
- performative: made or done for show (as to bolster one’s own image or make a positive impression on others)
- tariff: a schedule of duties imposed by a government on imported or in some countries exported goods
- six seven: a nonsensical expression connected to a song and a basketball player
- conclave: a private meeting or secret assembly
Oxford English Dictionary | RAGE BAIT
Chosen by 30.000 voters, the OED Word of the Year 2025 is rage bait, defined as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media account.”
The other two shortlisted words, shared by some of the other publishers, were aura farming and biohacking.
To read my previous WOTY posts or to get more detailed information on the WOTY 2025 chosen by the publishers listed above, click on the links in the Additional Resources section below.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
English words of the year 2021
English years of the year 2022
English words of the year 2023
English words of the year 2024
The Collins Word of the Year 2025
Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year 2025
Merriam-Webster 2025 Word of the Year
Oxford Word of the Year 2025
NOTES
I’m a freelance language tutor (English, Latin, Classical Greek), researcher, and a literary scholar currently based in Belgrade, Serbia.
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Andrew Shields
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Liam O'Mara IV, PhD
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