Digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence – this is how the dictionary Merriam-Webster defines "slop" – its 2025 Word of the Year.
Merriam-Webster's human editors have chosen slop as the 2025 Word of the Year, the dictionary said on Sunday, nodding to a year in which artificial intelligence and its effects, good and bad, dominated both newspaper headlines and casual conversation.
All that stuff dumped on our screens, captured in just four letters: slop.
It said that the "flood of slop in 2025 included absurd videos, off-kilter advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks pretty real, (and) junky AI-written books."
"In 2025, amid all the talk about AI threats, slop set a tone that’s less fearful, more mocking," said Merriam-Webster, seen as the premier dictionary of American English, tracing its lineage to Noah Webster, the pioneering American lexicographer.
The original meaning of the word, in the 1700s, was "soft mud," it recalled, while a century later, slop meant "food waste" and then more generally, "rubbish" or "a product of little or no value."
“It’s such an illustrative word,” said Greg Barlow, Merriam-Webster’s president, in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press (AP) 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.”
AI video generators like Sora have wowed with their ability to quickly create realistic clips based merely on text prompts. But a flood of these images on social media, including clips depicting celebrities and deceased public figures, has raised worries about misinformation, deepfakes and copyright.
Even public figures now often use AI-made videos and photos.
However, the word “slop” can also evoke unpleasant images of mud-caked pigs crowding around a dirty trough and for some, the word induces dread, the AP report suggested.
But to Barlow, it brings a sense of hope. The dictionary’s president says the spike in searches for the word reflects that people have grown more aware of fake or shoddy content and desire the inverse.
“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.”
To select the word of the year, the dictionary’s editors review data about which words have risen in search results and usage. Then they come to a consensus about which word best reflects the span of the year.
“We like to think that we are a mirror for people,” Barlow said.
Other words that stood out in Merriam-Webster’s 2025 lookup data include gerrymander (manipulating electoral districts for political advantage), touch grass (to participate in normal activities in the real world), performative, tariff, six seven (a young person’s phrase that has confused adults) and conclave, owing to the Vatican meeting this May to select a new pope.
"Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg," though not exactly a word that defined the year, is also among the top lookups list on Merriam-Webster.com.
