Dictionary.com's 2025 Word of the Year Is Not a Word
Dictionary.com sat down this year, looked at the entire English language, and said you know what, not today, and handed the crown to 67, which is not a word, is pronounced “six seven” and not “sixty-seven,” and means absolutely nothing that anyone has been able to pin down with any confidence. It started with a rap song, got picked up by TikTok, attached itself to a very tall basketball player, and then somehow ended up in the mouth of every third-grader in the country, which is how these things go now. By the time Merriam-Webster weighed in with their own pick — “slop,” defined as the ocean of low-quality garbage that AI dumps on the internet every twelve seconds — the two choices sitting next to each other started to feel less like a fun annual tradition and more like a note left on the refrigerator by the English language on its way out the door.
Dictionary.com sat down this year, looked at the entire English language, and said you know what, not today, and handed the crown to 67, which is not a word, is pronounced “six seven” and not “sixty-seven,” and means absolutely nothing that anyone has been able to pin down with any confidence. It started with a rap song, got picked up by TikTok, attached itself to a very tall basketball player, and then somehow ended up in the mouth of every third-grader in the country, which is how these things go now. By the time Merriam-Webster weighed in with their own pick — “slop,” defined as the ocean of low-quality garbage that AI dumps on the internet every twelve seconds — the two choices sitting next to each other started to feel less like a fun annual tradition and more like a note left on the refrigerator by the English language on its way out the door.