How ‘slop’ became the defining word of 2025

It’s official: 2025 was the year of slop.

Merriam-Webster just announced in a post that its “human editors” have chosen “slop” as the 2025 Word of the Year.

The dictionary’s official definition of the word is “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence,” a far cry from its original meaning. When the term was first coined in the 1700s, slop meant “soft mud,” before slowly morphing into a synonym for “rubbish.” Today, it’s the perfect four-letter word for the state of the internet.

“In 2025, amid all the talk about AI threats, slop set a tone that’s less fearful, more mocking,” the dictionary’s post reads. “The word sends a little message to AI: when it comes to replacing human creativity, sometimes you don’t seem too superintelligent.”

How slop took over everything

The concept of slop dominated the collective consciousness this year, from the content we consumed to the food we literally ate. 

Mere days into 2025, AI slop—the variety of click-harvesting, sensationalized, brain-melting content that’s likely taken over your Facebook feed—was already raising alarms. In the wake of the fires that devastated the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of L.A. this January, AI clips of heartwarming rescues began circulating to capitalize on the tragedy. In March, a study from Cornell University revealed that an influx of AI slop was slowly beginning to suffocate the web.

Since then, the problem has only escalated. We’ve seen a concerning wave of fake Holocaust AI content; AI slop used in political messaging by former New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo and President Trump himself; and AI-generated tributes to conservative pundit Charlie Kirk in the wake of his assassination. AI slop has thoroughly weasled its way into the marketing and advertising spheres, so much so that companies like Pinterest have had to roll out new filters to allow users to dial back the AI content. Everywhere you look, it’s slop all the way down. 

“The flood of slop in 2025 included absurd videos, off-kilter advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks pretty real, junky AI-written books, ‘workslop’ reports that waste coworkers’ time… and lots of talking cats,” Merriam-Webster wrote in its report. It added, “Like slime, sludge, and muck, slop has the wet sound of something you don’t want to touch.”

One good slop-based item did emerge this year, though: the slop bowl, a new colloquial term for the preferred meal of office workers that involves a bowl full of a bunch of mixed ingredients. In 2025, we doomscrolled our slop and ate it, too.