‘Slop’ is Merriam-Webster’s 2025 Word of the Year: The digital rubbish clogging the age of AI

Slop may not just be a word—Ii’s a snapshot of 2025, naming the low-quality content flooding screens and algorithms

A long time ago, slop was what you fed pigs. Now, it’s what your algorithm feeds you. Merriam-Webster Dictionary names “slop“ its 2025 Word of the Year.

To be sure, Merriam-Webster emphasizes that its human editors chose slop, defined as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” If love is a four-letter word, so is slop, and it captures everything filling our screens in the age of AI.

The sound and history of digital mess

Merriam-Webster also traces the word’s appeal to how it sounds. Like slime, sludge, and muck, it says slop has the wet sound of something you would rather not touch, oozing into everything.

The word’s history follows the same logic. In the 1700s, slop referred to “soft mud.” By the 1800s, it meant “food waste” (as in “pig slop”) and later, “rubbish,” or something “of little or no value.” The meaning hasn’t changed so much as it has widened; what once described physical mess now names the digital kind.

The lexicographer consensus

Merriam-Webster isn’t alone in noticing the trend. Earlier this year, Macquarie Dictionary flagged the same phenomenon with its Word of the Year pick: “AI slop.” According to Macquarie’s committee, “We understand now in 2025 what we mean by slop—AI slop, which lacks meaningful content or use.”

The trend highlights a new necessary skill for users: to become prompt engineers in order to wade through the daily deluge of AI slop.

The year 2025 solidified that digital compromise, reflected in other dictionaries’ choices:

• Oxford’s 2025 Word of the Year: Rage bait, content deliberately designed to elicit anger for engagement.
• Cambridge’s 2025 Word of the Year: Parasocial, defining the one-sided connection people feel with celebrities, influencers, and now, AI chatbots.

Slop has to stop

Slop may not just be a word. It’s a snapshot of 2025, even the writing on our walls, the sign of our times. Algorithms churn it out, AI industrializes it, and we humans slurp and swallow it to the last drop.

We’re about to welcome 2026, and already, we’re compromising on quality, originality, and even humanity. Everything is becoming about numbers, numbers, numbers. The focus is on engagement, impressions, and clicks. Rinse and repeat.

In this damning age of AI, the four-letter word “slop” needs a change. Slop has to stop.

 

 

Slop is  low-quality content usually produced in quantity through AI.

 

 

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