The Word of the Year is the dictionary’s selection of the most notable word of the year. It highlights trends in culture and world events. From Dictionary.com, “[to] select the 2025 Word of the Year, our lexicographers analyzed a large amount of data, including newsworthy headlines, trends in social media search engine results, and more to identify words that made an impact on our conversations, online and in the real world.” This year, the Dictionary.com Word of the Year for 2025 is “67”, a popular Gen Alpha slang term. The Merriam-Webster Word of the Year is “slop”, which they define as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence. In addition, the Oxford English Dictionary’s Word of the Year is “rage bait,” and they define it as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media account.”

In previous years, the Word of the Year has changed dramatically from the present day. In 2020, the Word of the Year was “pandemic.” This was chosen based on the start of the COVID-19 outbreak and the many tragic losses that came with it. Merriam-Webster explained in their article, ¨the Greek roots of this word tell a clear story: pan means ‘all’ or ‘every,’ and dēmos means ‘people’; its literal meaning is ‘of all the people.” The Word of the Year for 2010 was austerity, meaning ordinary or crucial. However, the word could also mean an imposed economy. In 2010, everyone was recovering from the Great Recession, a worldwide market crash from 2007 to mid-2009. 

No matter what it is, the Word of the Year is the summary of events, culturally and worldwide, that happened during the year.