Creepy, zany and demonstrably fake content is often called “slop.” Its spread online, helped by widely available generative artificial intelligence, earned it Merriam-Webster’s 2025 word of the year.
“It’s such an illustrative word,” said Greg Barlow, Merriam-Webster’s president, in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s announcement. “It’s part of a transformative technology, AI, and it’s something that people have found fascinating, annoying and a little bit ridiculous.”
“Slop” first appeared in the 1700s to mean soft mud, and later came to mean something of little value. The definition has since broadened to include “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.”
In practice, Barlow said, that covers “absurd videos, weird advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks real, junky AI-written digital books.”
AI video generators such as Sora can rapidly produce realistic clips from text prompts. But the surge of such images on social media — including depictions of celebrities and deceased public figures — has fueled concerns about misinformation, deepfakes and copyright.
That content has existed online for years, but the tools are now more accessible and have been used for political aims. Last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted a manipulated image of a beloved cartoon turtle, recast as a grenade-wielding fighter, to defend U.S. military actions in Venezuela.
The Canadian animated show Franklin teaches preschoolers about kindness and inclusivity — yet in Hegseth’s post its 6-year-old main character was repurposed to promote violence.
The word “slop” summons images of mud-caked pigs at a trough or a bucket of steaming stew — or AI mash-ups reflecting algorithmic bias with offensive or nonsensical elements. For some, the term inspires dread.
Barlow views it more optimistically. He says the jump in searches for “slop” shows people are more aware of fake or shoddy content and are seeking the opposite.
“They want things that are real, they want things that are genuine,” he said. “It’s almost a defiant word when it comes to AI. When it comes to replacing human creativity, sometimes AI actually doesn’t seem so intelligent.”
Merriam-Webster’s editors select the word of the year by reviewing data on which words rise in searches and usage, then reaching a consensus on which best reflects the year’s themes.
“We like to think that we are a mirror for people,” Barlow said.
Some words are perennial top lookups but are filtered out when editors choose the single word that best defines the year. “Ubiquitous,” “paradigm,” “albeit,” and “irregardless” frequently appear — the last of which is included in the dictionary because it is widely used to mean “regardless.”
The dictionary has named a word each year since 2003 to capture the moment. Last year, amid the post-election mood in the U.S., Merriam-Webster chose “polarisation.”
A new edition released last month added over 5,000 words — a rare, comprehensive revision and reimagining of one of the publisher’s most popular dictionaries.
