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Pop CultureMerriam-Webster Word of the YearDec 15, 2025

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year Describes Exactly What Drowned the Internet in 2025

“Slop” was everywhere you looked.

By Precious Fondren
Merriam-Webster Word of the Year 2025: Slop
Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Merriam-Webster has officially entered the word of the year chat. 

The dictionary announced “slop” as its 2025 Word of the Year, following a year in which the internet has felt increasingly clogged with content that is loud, low-effort, uncanny, and somehow unavoidable. Coming after Oxford’s selection of “rage bait” and Dictionary.com’s pick of “67," Webster’s choice feelsmore observational of the times.

In its announcement, the dictionary didn’t mince words about why “slop” resonated so widely this year. 

“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. People found it annoying, and people ate it up,” Merriam-Webster wrote on its website. Webster said the definition captures something many internet users have struggled to articulate: the exhausting contradiction of hating this content while still scrolling past it, clicking it, or sharing it ironically.

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“In 2025, amid all the talk about AI threats, slop set a tone that’s less fearful, more mocking,” Merriam-Webster continued. “The word sends a little message to AI: when it comes to replacing human creativity, sometimes you don’t seem too superintelligent.”

The website also traced the word’s grimy appeal through history with a quick lesson.

“Like slime, sludge, and muck, slop has the wet sound of something you don’t want to touch. Slop oozes into everything,” it explained. “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.’” 

Online reactions suggest Merriam-Webster struck a nerve with their choice.  

“Wow, this is actually a great pick for 2025. I usually find that they aren't that great — generally feeling like the new word has no staying power. I think this one sticks around,” one person commented under the announcement. 

“The internet really collectively nailed this one," another comment said. "Slop is the perfect word for what we're all being drowned in.”

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