Rage-baiting the slop: Why are the words of the year so weird?

Entertainment Merriam-Webster's word of the year was 'slop' — one of the many internet and AI-focused choices for 2025(Peter Hamlin/The Associated Press) U.S. President George H. W. Bush speaks in 1990. That year, 'bushlips' was chosen by the American Dialect Society as its word of the year, following his campaign slogan 'Read my lips, no new taxes.' The word meant insincere political rhetoric, according to the society.(Jerome Delay/AFP/Getty Images) Rage-baiting the slop: Why are the words of the year so weird? Word of the year are intended to provoke discussion and depict language in motion, linguists say Vibe-coding parasocial rage-bait slop - 6-7! Word-salad it may seem, this phrase is actually the most important sentence of the year. At least, that’s what the Western world’s various English dictionaries would have us believe; as each represents the “word of the year” (WOTY) selection from a different lexicographic group. You’d be excused for seeing a certain pattern here, or being somewhat unhappy about it. From CNN to , this year’s slew of words-of-the-year have generated what's become a familiar reaction: Questions over whether these sometimes short-lived, sometimes silly - or even nonsensical - words deserve a vaunted place in the hallowed halls of our official language records. Fox News But given that reaction, why are language experts picking internet-based fads that may fade from use in a year’s time? What arcane process leads to words of the year that vacillate from the brain-numbing ( like 2023’s “rizz” ) to the politically charged ( as in 2021’s “insurrection” )? And, given how mad it makes everyone, why are they even bothering to do it at all? WATCH | Dictionary.com's word of the year? Somehow, it's '6-7': “I am a huge nerd about it, but I obviously really love doing it,” explained Kelly Wright of the American Dialect Society (ADS), a sociolinguist and lexicographer who runs the society's WOTY nomination process. “It's a lot of fun - It's the most fun I get to have. Most of the other stuff that I do is not fun at all.” Part of that fun, she says, comes from the selection process - something that varies widely among various determining bodies, and contributes to the kinds of words that make headlines. Different approaches Take Cambridge Dictionary, for example. According to senior editor Jessica Rundell, their process starts with a tech team compiling a master list of the most looked-up words that year - looking for both general increases over the entire year, and spikes localized around a few weeks of intense interest. From there, a group of editors will select relevant words from that list they can “build a story around” - in other words, that can be used to encapsulate certain interests, questions or topics that defined that year. In Cambridge’s case, those words already need to be in their dictionary before consideration. “When we're choosing a word to go into the dictionary, we look at whether we think it's [going] to last,” Rundell said. “If...

Preview: ~500 words