AP Illustration / Peter Hamlin

“Slop” can refer to “absurd videos, off-kilter advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks pretty real” and more.

NEED TO KNOW

• Merriam-Webster has named “slop” as its 2025 word of the year
• The dictionary publisher defined it as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence”
• “All that stuff dumped on our screens, captured in just four letters: the English language came through again,” the company wrote

After a year filled with news about artificial intelligence, the transformation of pop culture and more, Merriam-Webster has named “slop” as its 2025 word of the year.

On Monday, Dec. 15, the dictionary publisher announced that slop — which they defined as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence” — had earned its spot in the modern-day lexicon to become this year’s word.

“All that stuff dumped on our screens, captured in just four letters: the English language came through again,” Merriam-Webster wrote in its announcement.

“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,” the company continued. “People found it annoying, and people ate it up.”

Speaking with the Associated Press, Greg Barlow, Merriam-Webster’s president, called the word “illustrative.”

“It’s part of a transformative technology, AI, and it’s something that people have found fascinating, annoying and a little bit ridiculous,” he explained.

According to the dictionary, “slop” was first used in the 1700s to mean soft mud, but then evolved in the 1800s to mean “food waste” (as in “pig slop”), and then finally something of little value.

Much of the content referred to as “slop” has come from AI video generators like Sora that allow users to create clips in minutes based on simple text prompts — as critics have said that social media has been inundated by uncanny valley-looking videos of celebrities, public figures (including some fictional or deceased ones) and untrue news events.

Although “slop” has a negative connotation for most, Barlow told the AP that the word brings a sense of hope — as it points to the public becoming more discerning in the content they consume.

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.”

Merriam-Webster’s word of the year — which began in 2003 — is selected by editors who review spikes in data about which words have been commonly searched and used over the course of the year. They then select the most relevant. and often choose words based on current events (in 2020, the word was “pandemic” and 2021 brought “vaccine”).

“We like to think that we are a mirror for people,” Barlow told the AP.

“Words like ‘ubiquitous,’ ‘paradigm,’ ‘albeit,’ ‘irregardless,’ these are always top lookups because they’re words that are on the edge of our lexicon,” he explained. “‘Irregardless’ is a word in the dictionary for one reason: It’s used. It’s been used for decades to mean ‘regardless.'”

Along with the latest word of the year, Merriam-Webster announced that a number of other words and phrases that were prominent this year, including gerrymander; touch grass; performative; tariff; 6-7 and conclave.

The publisher also acknowledged Lake Char­gog­ga­gogg­man­chaug­ga­gogg­chau­bu­na­gun­ga­maugg — after it “delighted and baffled us when it started clogging the Top Lookups list on Merriam-Webster.com.” An alternative name for Webster Lake in Massachusetts, the name appeared this year in the hit Roblox game Spelling Bee.

Merriam-Webster’s newest Collegiate Dictionary edition was released in November with over 5,000 new words inside, marking its first update in 20 years.

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