Merriam-Webster Names 'Slop' 2025 Word of the Year, Highlighting Digital Economy Strain

2025-12-16 general

Springfield, Tuesday, 16 December 2025.
On December 15, 2025, Merriam-Webster officially defined the digital economy’s saturation point by naming “slop” its Word of the Year. Redefining a 1700s term for “soft mud” to describe low-quality, mass-produced AI content, this selection signals a critical cultural shift where human attention is increasingly besieged by synthetic output. With reports indicating that nearly 75% of new web content now involves AI, the term serves as a defiant critique against the deluge of “junk”—from deepfakes to nonsensical advertising—currently devaluing online ecosystems.

Defining the Digital Debris

The selection of “slop” is not merely linguistic; it is a direct commentary on the supply-side economics of the internet. While the word originated in the 1700s to describe soft mud and evolved by the 1800s to mean food waste or rubbish, its 2025 definition targets a specific modern inefficiency: “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence” [1][2]. This rebranding captures the friction caused by generative AI tools like OpenAI’s Sora and Google’s Gemini Veo, which have transformed the internet’s infrastructure [6]. A study from May 2025 highlighted the scale of this saturation, claiming that nearly 75% of all new web content from the preceding month involved some form of AI generation [6]. This massive influx includes everything from “junky AI-written books” and absurd videos to “workslop” reports that actively waste employee time, creating a productivity drag on the digital economy [2][3].

A Defiant Response to Synthetic Saturation

Merriam-Webster’s choice reflects a consumer pushback against the erosion of authenticity in media. Greg Barlow, the company’s president, noted that while AI is a transformative technology, the public response has been one of defiance, stating that when it comes to replacing human creativity, “sometimes AI actually doesn’t seem so intelligent” [1]. This sentiment is echoed by Peter Sokolowski, editor at large, who suggests the word serves as a message to the technology sector regarding its limitations [8]. The real-world consequences of this “slop” moved beyond mere annoyance in November 2025, when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth utilized a manipulated image to defend U.S. military actions in Venezuela, illustrating how low-quality synthetic media can infiltrate high-level geopolitical discourse [1][5].

Market Terminology and Competitive Indicators

The term has also begun to permeate technical financial analysis, proving its versatility beyond social media critiques. On September 9, 2025, CNBC’s Todd Gordon utilized the phrase “chop and slop” to describe the behavior of moving averages in market technicals, indicating a period of indecisive trading before buyers intervene [4]. This adoption into financial lexicon mirrors the broader economic anxiety reflected in Merriam-Webster’s list of runners-up, which included the economically charged term “tariff” alongside political terms like “gerrymander” [2][3]. The dictionary’s selection process, based on spikes in search data, acts as a lagging indicator of societal focus, following previous years that highlighted “polarization” (2024) and “authentic” (2023) [1][2].

The Broader Linguistic Landscape

While Merriam-Webster focused on the quality of content, other institutions highlighted the emotional economics of the internet. Oxford University Press selected “rage bait” as its 2025 word of the year, defined as content designed to elicit anger for engagement—a tactic that has evolved to hijack user attention and influence emotions [3][5]. Meanwhile, Dictionary.com tapped into the emerging demographic influence of Gen Alpha by selecting “67,” a numerical slang term [5]. However, Merriam-Webster’s choice of “slop” remains the most distinct critique of the year’s technological trajectory, summarizing the collective exhaustion with a digital ecosystem where, as Barlow notes, people “want things that are real” [1][5].

Sources

Artificial Intelligence Digital Media