On Sunday, Merriam-Webster named “slop” as the 2025 Word of the Year, a testament to its cultural significance in representing low-quality AI-generated content flooding the internet and social media. This selection follows the increasing recognition of 'slop' being used to describe poorly crafted digital material rapidly produced by artificial intelligence.
Merriam-Webster defines 'slop' as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” Greg Barlow, Merriam-Webster’s president, shared with the Associated Press, “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.”
The editorial team at Merriam-Webster chooses the Word of the Year by analyzing which words have shown increased search volume and usage, eventually identifying the term that best encapsulates the cultural zeitgeist of the year. The term 'slop' saw a rise in searches, suggesting growing public awareness of the presence of misleading or poorly made content online.
Dictionaries have been observing AI's footprint on language trends for some time. Cambridge chose “hallucinate” as its 2023 word of the year, acknowledging the propensity of AI systems to generate seemingly credible but false information.
This linguistic trend is part of a broader evolution within digital culture. Oxford University Press picked “rage bait” for content engineered to provoke outrage and drive engagement. Meanwhile, Cambridge Dictionary spotlighted “parasocial,” a term defining one-sided relationships between fans and their favored celebrities or influencers.
The term 'slop' has historical roots, first entering English in the 1700s to mean soft mud. By the 1800s, it was used to describe food waste given to pigs and further evolved to imply rubbish or items of little value. The AI-related meaning of 'slop' draws upon this background of depicting undesired or unappealing materials.