December 15, 2025 / 5:12 AM EST / AP
“Slop” — a once-farmyard term that now describes low-quality digital output — has been named Merriam-Webster’s 2025 word of the year. The label, commonly used to describe creepy, zany or plainly fake online material, has spread as generative artificial intelligence tools have made such content easier to produce in bulk.
“It’s such an illustrative word,” said Greg Barlow, president of Merriam-Webster. He told The Associated Press that “slop” sits at the intersection of a transformative technology and the public’s mixed reaction: fascinated, annoyed and a little bit ridiculous.
The word itself dates to the 1700s, originally referring to soft mud and later meaning something of little value. Its modern entry now explicitly covers “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence,” a definition that includes absurd videos, weird ad images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks real and junky AI-written books, according to Barlow.
Recent advances in AI have widened the scope and reach of such material. Video generators like Sora can create realistic clips from simple text prompts, and social platforms have seen floods of synthetic images and short videos — some depicting public figures or deceased celebrities — which raise concerns about misinformation, deepfakes and copyright infringement.
The phenomenon isn’t entirely new, but the tools are far more accessible and occasionally weaponized for political purposes. In one notable example last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted a manipulated image reimagining the beloved children’s character Franklin as a grenade-wielding fighter to justify U.S. military action in Venezuela. The Canadian preschool show Franklin, which teaches kindness and inclusivity, was repurposed in a way that many criticized as promoting violence.
The word “slop” carries its agricultural connotations — mud-caked animals at a trough or a bucket of fetid stew — and now conjures images of algorithmic mash-ups that produce offensive, nonsensical or otherwise low-value digital artifacts.
But Merriam-Webster’s editors say the surge in searches for the term also offers a hopeful sign. Barlow noted that increased interest suggests people are more aware of low-quality or fake content and are searching for ways to distinguish genuine material. “They want things that are real, they want things that are genuine,” he said, calling the term almost defiant against replacing human creativity.
How the word is chosen
Merriam-Webster compiles a list of words that spike in lookups and usage over the year and selects the one that best reflects cultural trends. Some perennial high-lookups — words such as “ubiquitous,” “paradigm” and “irregardless” — are filtered out because they routinely appear near the top. The dictionary has announced a word of the year each year since 2003; last year’s selection was “polarization.” A new edition of the dictionary released last month added more than 5,000 entries in a major update.
Runners-up for 2025
– Six seven: A viral inside-joke phrase that took off in summer 2025, tracing back to rapper Skrilla’s 2024 song “Doot Doot (6 7).”
– Performative: Used to call out disingenuous public gestures, from influencer posts to political theater.
– Gerrymandering: Kept prominent by map redrawing battles ahead of the 2026 midterms, including moves in Texas and Indiana and counterefforts in California.
– “Touch grass”: An internet admonition to step away from online life and engage with the real world.
– Conclave: Searches spiked after Pope Leo XIV became the first American pope in May 2025; the word derives from Italian for “with a key.”
– Tariff: Brought into national debate as former President Trump advocated for them; tariffs account for under 4% of federal revenue and did little to curb a $1.8 trillion federal deficit in fiscal 2025.
– Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg: The famously long Massachusetts lake name trended after appearing in the Roblox game Spelling Bee!, though locals often call it Webster Lake.
Merriam-Webster said “slop” best captured a defining aspect of 2025: the uneasy mix of powerful new AI capabilities and public efforts to spot, name and reject the low-quality content those tools can produce.