Merriam-Webster names ‘slop’ the word of the year
AI’s impact on our social media feeds has not gone unnoticed by one of America’s top dictionaries. Amidst the onslaught of content that has swept the web over the past twelve months, Merriam-Webster announced Sunday that its word of the year for 2025 is “slop.” The dictionary defines the term as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” “Like slime, sludge, and muck, slop has the wet sound of something you don’t want to touch. Slop oozes into everything,” the dictionary writes, adding that, in an age of AI anxiety, it is a term designed to communicate “a tone that’s less fearful, more mocking” of the technology. “It’s such an illustrative word,” Merriam-Webster’s president, Greg…
