Explore the latest developments concerning Merriam-Webster’s 2025 word.
Merriam-Webster’s 2025 word of the year is 'slop'
Creepy, zany and demonstrably fake content is often called “slop.” The word's proliferation online, in part thanks to the widespread availability of generative artificial intelligence, landed it Merriam-Webster's 2025 word of the year.
“It’s such an illustrative word," said Greg Barlow, Merriam-Webster's president, in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s announcement. “It’s part of a transformative technology, AI, and it’s something that people have found fascinating, annoying and a little bit ridiculous.”
“Slop” was first used in the 1700s to mean soft mud, but it evolved more generally to mean something of little value. The definition has since expanded to mean "digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence."
‘Slop’ crowned Merriam-Webster word of the year, defining era of AI-generated content
It's messy, it's meaningless and it's everywhere: "slop" has been crowned as Merriam-Webster's 2025 Word of the Year.
The dictionary defines the term as "digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence."
In the announcement, Merriam-Webster said that the word slop originated in the 1700s to mean "soft mud" before the meaning evolved to "food waste" in the 1800s and, eventually, "rubbish" and "a product of little or no value" in colloquial terminology.
"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 in their announcement. "People found it annoying, and people ate it up."
VEVOR Professional Dual-Action Airbrush Kit 120W Electric Spray Gun Air Brush Painting Set Art Nail Tattoo Makeup Model Sprayer
Merriam-Webster names ‘slop’ the word of the year
AI’s impact on our social media feeds has not gone unnoticed by one of America’s top dictionaries. Amidst the onslaught of content that has swept the web over the past 12 months, Merriam-Webster announced Sunday that its word of the year for 2025 is “slop.”
The dictionary defines the term as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.”
“Like slime, sludge, and muck, slop has the wet sound of something you don’t want to touch. Slop oozes into everything,” the dictionary writes, adding that, in an age of AI anxiety, it is a term designed to communicate “a tone that’s less fearful, more mocking” of the technology.
For more detailed information, explore updates concerning Merriam-Webster’s 2025 word.
0 Comments