Merriam-Webster, the US publisher of some of the world’s best-known encyclopedias, has named “slop” the word of the year for 2025.
“We define slop 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,” Merriam-Webster writes, continuing:
“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.”
