Slop, vibe coding and glazing: AI dominates 2025’s words of the year

By Gail Flanagan, PhD Candidate, Applied Linguistics, University of Limerick

For us linguists, the flurry of “word of the year” announcements from dictionaries and publishers is a holiday tradition as anticipated as mince pies. The words of the year aren’t just a fun peek into new slang and language changes, they also tell us quite a bit about the worries, trends and obsessions of the English-speaking world.

And this year’s list has one clear theme. In 2025, artificial intelligence (AI) played a huge role in our offices, social media feeds, music and film, and now…

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