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.”
In other words, “you know, absurd videos, weird advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks real, junky AI-written digital books,” Barlow said.
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.
Such content has existed online for years, but the tools are more accessible now — and have been used by political figures, including the head of the Pentagon, to political ends. Last month, U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth posted a manipulated image of a beloved cartoon turtle, reimagined as a grenade-wielding fighter, to defend U.S. military actions in Venezuela, which angered social media users and was condemned by the publisher of the original books.
A TikTok account hosting videos of AI-generated explosions that others claimed were in Ukraine was removed from the platform following inquiries from the CBC News visual investigations team. The account shows how low-quality content made with generative AI — known as ‘AI slop’ — can warp perceptions and fuel misinformation.
While the word might induce dread for some, Barlow says it also 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.”
How the dictionary chooses their word of the year
The dictionary has selected one word every year since 2003 to capture and make sense of the current moment. Last year, shortly after the U.S. presidential election and amid the shifting national mood, Merriam-Webster chose the word “polarization.”
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.
The word “parasocial” describes a one-sided connection that a person has with someone they do not know — such as a celebrity, an influencer, a fictional character in a book or even an AI chatbot. According to University of Toronto Mississauga communications professor Bree McEwan, the term was coined in 1956, but bears new relevance in 2025 amid celebrity fan groups like the Swifties.
Each year, there are words that are consistently looked up, but they’re filtered out as the dictionary’s editors pick the one that best defines the year at hand.
“Words like ‘ubiquitous,’ ‘paradigm,’ ‘albeit,’ ‘irregardless,’ these are always top lookups because they’re words that are on the edge of our lexicon,” Barlow said.
Some runners-up
The dictionary also shouted out some words that were searched for frequently in 2025, including “performative,” “gerrymander,” and, yes, “6-7.”
The viral term 6-7 exploded in popularity over the summer. It’s an inside joke with an unclear meaning, driven by social media, but can be traced back to rapper Skrilla’s 2024 song Doot Doot (6 7).
“It’s self-referential,” Barlow said. “It’s all the rage, but it’s not a defining term.”
The word was named Dictionary.com’s top word for 2025, while Oxford University Press selected “rage bait,” and Cambridge Dictionary chose “parasocial.”
Merriam-Webster also noted that searches for the word “gerrymander” shot up this year as both Republicans and Democrats sought to redraw voting districts in order to give themselves an electoral edge.
Rachel Bendayan, MP for Quebec’s Outremont, got in on the 6-7 trend during question period. Canada added 67,000 jobs in October, beating economists’ expectations and nudging the unemployment rate down to 6.9 per cent.
And searches for “performative” were driven by all kinds of actions — from activism to matcha-drinking. But chief among them, according to Merriam-Webster, was the rise of the “performative male” — online shorthand for a disingenuous guy who pretends to like things women like in order to earn their trust.
“Tariffs” — a familiar word to Canadians — also made the list. Originally from Italian and Arabic for “free of charge,” the word entered English centuries ago. The definition is “a schedule of duties imposed by a government on imported or in some countries exported goods,” but the word got a boost from Donald Trump’s massive shakeup to the world trading system, which he’s done by placing tariffs on goods from other countries in the name of protecting American industries.
“Touch grass,” a popular internet phrase that’s used in an effort to urge people to get offline and engage in normal activities; “conclave,” the process for electing a new Pope; and the wildly long name of a Massachusetts lake, “Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg,” round out the honourable mentions.
