US publisher Merriam-Webster has picked out the word “slop” as its 2025 Word of the Year amid an online proliferation of low-quality content generated by artificial intelligence.
While the potential of AI can dazzle and terrify, the growing use of the term slop reflects a recognition that — at least for now — the technology has its limitations.
What does slop mean?
Merriam-Webster says the original sense of the word, from the 1700s, was “soft mud.”
By the 1800s, the meaning shifted more to that of food waste, as in “pig slop,” and then more generally, “rubbish” or “a product of little or no value.”
That sense is now widely applied to AI computer-generated content.
“We define slop as ‘digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence,'” said Merriam Webster, the leading US producer of language reference works.
Among the examples of AI slop given by the publisher were:
- “absurd” videos
- “off-kilter” advertising images
- “cheesy” propaganda
- “junky” AI-written books
- fake news “that looks pretty real”
- lots of talking cats
“People found it annoying, and people ate it up,” Merriam Webster said.
Why did Merriam-Webster choose ‘slop’ as its Word of the Year?
The publisher highlighted the word as a celebration of the fact that, at present, the power of AI is not unlimited.
“In 2025, amid all the talk about AI threats, slop set a tone that’s less fearful, more mocking. The word sends a little message to AI: when it comes to replacing human creativity, sometimes you don’t seem too superintelligent,” it said.
“All that stuff dumped on our screens, captured in just four letters: the English language came through again.”
Merriam-Webster’s president, Greg Barlow, told the AP news agency that slop was chosen because it’s “such an illustrative word.”
“It’s part of a transformative technology, AI, and it’s something that people have found fascinating, annoying and a little bit ridiculous,” he said.
What other words were chosen?
Other lexicographical high-flyers of 2025 reflected the year’s political and cultural scene. They were:
- Gerrymander — Manipulate voting district boundaries to give one political party an unfair electoral advantage
- Touch grass — Slang urging someone to disengage from excessive online life and reconnect with real-world activities
- Performative — Actions done mainly for show or image-boosting, especially common in social media politics, activism, and culture
- Tariff — A government-imposed tax or duty on imported (and sometimes exported) goods
- Six seven — Gen Alpha slang with no real meaning, popularized by a viral song and memes, used as a playful chant or interjection
- Conclave — A secret, closed-door meeting of Catholic cardinals to elect a new pope
- Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg — A famously long Massachusetts lake name that surged in searches due to an online spelling game
Edited by: Elizabeth Schumacher
