Terminology - WOTTIES 2025 - The American Dialect Society competing Words of the Year

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

The terms competing for the Word of the Year (WOTY), are always interesting. The American Dialect Society 2025 WOTY contenders included the following:

• the algorithm, n: essentialized view of online algorithms as a unitary, deterministic entity.
• amphifa, n: playful resistance movement, as seen in “Amphibians Against Fascism” in Portland (amphibian + antifa).
• DOGE, v: eliminate or remove due to inefficiency claims from the Department of Government Efficiency; often get DOGEd.
• rage-bait, n: content that intentionally evokes rage, often in a taunting way.
• reheat nachos, v: redo something (as music), often in an inferior fashion.
• 6-7: interjection containing little semantic content, originating from “Doot Doot (6 7)” by Skrilla.

The American Dialect Society, also elects Words of the Year in following six categories: 

MOST USEFUL WORD OF THE YEAR

• ☛ “that’s AI”: statement of distrust when determining that something presented as real (as an image) is in fact AI-generated.
• clock, v: notice or recognize, often calling attention to a subtext.
• diabolical, adj: evil in a fun or shocking way (can be used as an exclamation).
• rage-bait, n: content that intentionally evokes rage, often in a taunting way.
• recession indicator, n: signal of an impending economic downturn, often attributed humorously to cultural and fashion trends.
• rot, v: lounge and scroll social media (evoking brainrot and bedrot).
• valid crashout, n: justified mental breakdown.

MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED WORD OF THE YEAR

• ☛ chopped, adj: ugly, undesirable.
• glaze, v: effusively compliment in a cringeworthy fashion.
• performative male, n: man who superficially appeals to progressive or sensitive ideals through aesthetic presentation.
• unc, n: old person, originally an African American Vernacular English (AAVE) shortening of uncle but now gender-neutral.
• vibe-coding, n: use of an AI agent to code or assist in coding by using natural-language prompts.

POLITICAL WORD OF THE YEAR 

• ☛ icy conditions, n: coded phrase alerting that ICE has been spotted in a neighborhood.
• disappear, v.: remove, abduct, or arrest (a person), as by a government agent.
• DOGE, v: eliminate or remove due to inefficiency claims from the Department of Government Efficiency; often get DOGEd (e.g., USAID).
• Kavanaugh stop, n: immigration status check in which a person is detained based on social identifiers (referring to Justice Kavanaugh’s opinion in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo). 
• TACO, n: acronym for Trump Always Chickens Out (as in TACO trade).
• vice-signal, v: publicly promote negative or controversial views; antonym of virtue-signal.

DIGITAL WORD OF THE YEAR 

• ☛ slop, n: low-quality, high-quantity content, most typically produced by generative AI; also as a combining form for anything lacking value produced in mass quantities.
• the algorithm, n: essentialized view of online algorithms as a unitary, deterministic entity.
• clanker, n: pejorative term for AI agents and robots.
• Great Meme Reset, n: hypothetical youth movement to reset memes on January 1, 2026.
• Italian brainrot, n: mock-Italian memes with generative AI characters (like Bombardiro Crocodilo and Ballerina Cappuccina).

INFORMAL WORD OF THE YEAR 

• ☛ 6-7: interjection containing little semantic content, originating from “Doot Doot (6 7)” by Skrilla.
• big back, n: a person’s large body, or a large-bodied person (also bigbackery, big back behavior).
• body tea, n: attractive physical appearance (reinterpretation of her body tea).
• face card, n: undeniable good looks (as in face card never declined).
• (X), I fear: indication of mock apprehension, used for ironic effect.
• smoke, n: drama or aggression (as in "don’t want no smoke").

MOST CREATIVE WORD OF THE YEAR 

• ☛ reheat nachos, v: redo something (as music), often in an inferior fashion.
• amphifa, n: playful resistance movement, as seen in “Amphibians Against Fascism” in Portland (amphibian + antifa).
• fridge cigarette, n: euphemism for an ice-cold Diet Coke or similar drink taken from a refrigerator as a refreshment.
• lowkirkenuinely, adv: in a lowkey genuine manner (lowkey + Kirk + genuinely), also flowkirkenuinely (flow state + Kirk + genuinely).

References

American Dialect Society (ADL) (website)

https://americandialect.org/

Zimmer, B. and Dr. K. E. Wright (Jan. 9, 2026). American Dialect Society selects ‘slop’ as 2025 Word of the Year. ADL 2025 WOTY Press Release. 

https://americandialect.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/2025-Word-of-the-Year-PRESS-RELEASE.pdf

Terminology - WOTTIES 2025 'slop' the American Dialect Society Word of the Year

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

On January 9th 2026, The prestigious 137-year-old American Dialect Society (ADL) voted slop—prefix, suffix, and noun—as the 2025 Word of the Year (WOTY). The ADL defines slop as: 

*slop, n: low-quality, high-quantity content, most typically produced by generative AI; also as a combining form for anything lacking value produced in mass quantities.

In fact, the ADL actually promoted one of its 2024 contenders for Word of the Year to the WOTY in 2025.  Indeed, AI slop was already voted as a contender for the Society’s 2024 Computer Word of the Year. 

In 2025, the promotion of slop to the Word of the Year was explained by the quantum leap in artificial intelligence (AI) use, which in turn led to a concomitant increase in the production of AI-generated slop. An increase only paralleled by the grammatically diversified increase in the use of the term slop. 

For example ‘slop’ functionning as a prefix:

• slop economy - referring to the ecosystem of websites and social media accounts that churn out endless AI content to harvest advertising revenue.
• slop bot - automated accounts that churn out slop to manipulate search rankings.
• slop feeds - search engine results that have become saturated with low-value, repetitive AI outputs.
• slop content – filler media such as absurd videos or nonsensical AI-written articles.

For example ‘slop’ functioning as a suffix:

• AI-slop - content generated by LLMs that is considered repetitive or uninspired.
• brain-slop - content designed for mindless scrolling.
• engagement slop - posts created solely as bait to generate likes or comments.
• friendslop - low-cost, chaotic, indie cooperative gaming trend.

And ‘slop’ functioning as a noun, such as: slopification and slopper (someone overly reliant on generative AI). 

A new constellation of slop terms, orbiting around AI-generated slop, indicating that slop has definitely migrated from its 16th-century origins—referring to slushy mud—to the digital world.  Thus, a year’s worth of language use ended up being crowned by the term slop-—in all of its grammatical variations.

References
American Dialect Society (ADL) (website)
https://americandialect.org/ 
Zimmer, B. and Dr. K. E. Wright (Jan. 9, 2026). American Dialect Society selects ‘slop’ as 2025 Word of the Year. ADL 2025 WOTY Press Release. 
https://americandialect.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/2025-Word-of-the-Year-PRESS-RELEASE.pdf

All the Words of the Year, 1990 to present.  American Dialect Society. 

https://americandialect.org/woty/all-of-the-words-of-the-year-1990-to-present/#2024

Oh, patents! FabBRICK® Projects

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

In 2023, five years after its inception, FabBRICK® had produced 152,000 bricks. A quantity of bricks that amounted to 32 tons of upcycled, used textiles. In other words, enough brick orders to justify expanding the company’s size, and to give everyone working for FabBRICK® a clear sense of doing good in the world. A positive impact on yet another serious aspect of environmental pollution, considering how much used and/or waste textiles had been given a second life in stunning wall cladding and furniture projects, such as those exemplified below. 

After all, 4 to 5.8 million tons of used textiles are discarded each year, in Europe alone, a large portion of which is sold to Africa. Sales to Africa, where some 30% of the used clothing ends up in infamous landfills, because the textiles are too damaged for purchase. An environmental disaster compounded by the fact that the African used-clothing market, called the Mitumba market, also contributes to strangling local textile production, as no one can compete with used-clothing prices (Textile Mountain, 2020). 

Tryptic - Office entrance hall. FabBRICK® Catalog, p.35.

Mural - Parisian coffeeshop.FabBRICK® Catalog, p. 45

Furniture - Unique pieces. (FabBRICK® Website)

References
FabBRICK® (website)
https://www.fab-brick.com/en/architecture
FabBRICK® Unique pieces
https://www.fab-brick.com/en/pi%C3%A8ces-uniques
FabBRICK® Wall covering catalog
https://www.fab-brick.com/en/_files/ugd/21e6f9_c34fa774b8fc41f8be9724b9756d459e.pdf 
Textile Mountain: The hidden burden of our textile waste. (Website)
https://www.textilemountainfilm.com/

Oh, patents! FabBRICK®

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Founded by the French architect Clarisse Merlet, FabBRICK® is a company that upcycles used and/or waste textiles into bricks, in turn used for interior design, decorative cladding, and/or thermal or sound insulation. Textiles, sorted by fiber and/or color palette, are shredded, mixed with a patented adhesive compound, and then compressed into bricks that are dried, prior to being used in various decorative and/or functional applications. FabBRICKS® are a patented invention. The invention is recited in a family of French (FR), European (EP) and World (WO) patents, in particular WO2021078815A1, titled (in English) Recycled textile material (in French, Matériau en textile recyclé). The patent was granted on April 29th 2021, to Clarisse Merlet.

The FabBRICK® invention offers a solution at the intersection of a two-fold problematic situation. First, the use of insulating construction materials that are environmentally polluting, high-energy-consuming, and/or potentially damaging. For example, such polluting materials as synthetic polystyrene insulators have a high energy footprint. Even organic, bio-sourced insulating materials have the disadvantage of being potentially depletable. For example, this is the case for plant wool made from straw, cork, or wood; animal wool harvested from sheep; or mineral wool such as fiberglass. Secondly, and most importantly, the invention seeks to offer a new outlet for recycling existing environmental waste, in particular used, and or waste textiles*. Especially considering that no prior art exists for upcycling used and/or waste textiles for construction, specifically for insulation purposes, whether thermal or acoustic. 

Finally, by bringing together concerns about existing insulation material pollution with a high energy footprint , on the one hand, and limited recycling outlets for used textile waste, on the other, the FabBRICK® invention also seeks to offer a product that is aesthetically pleasing. Thus, both the FabBRICK®  product and manufacturing process address problems of the prior art by upcycling used and/or waste textiles into construction and/or insulation materials, using non-polluting, organic adhesive and a press with a zero-energy-consuming footprint. 

The patent Figure 1 below depicts a construction FabBRICK® 10, made of a substance 1, comprising a used and/or waste textile-based stiffening component 2, and an animal and/or plant-based adhesive matrix component 3. The patent Figures 2A and 2B depict, respectively, top (10A) and bottom (10B) views of the FabBRICK® 10. The top view 10A depicts the FabBRICK® 10 tenons 11. The bottom view 10B depicts the FabBRICK® 10 mortises 12.

The patent Figure 3 below depicts the FabBRICK® fabrication press 200**. The press 200 comprises four or more vertical molds 210, attached to a frame 201 and platform 202, and into which the FabBRICK® substance 1 is poured. Each of the molds have lateral sides 211, top 212 and bottom 213 ends. The bottom ends 213 each have a base 214 that translates under compression within the lateral sides 211. Each of the mold bases 214 is also pierced to enable all excess liquid adhesive to drain from the highly absorbent bricks, under compression forces. Excess drainage liquid is then recovered beneath the press in a collection tray, and used to dilute subsequent batches of adhesive.  

The press has a double vertical compression and ejection mechanism, one at the top 220, and one at the bottom 230, each comprising a 20-ton hydraulic cylinder, a stamping hydraulic cylinder 221 at the top, and an ejection hydraulic cylinder 231 at the bottom. Thus, the press 200 exerts downward vertical compression forces on the product inside the molds 210, via a compression stamp 222, and upward ejection pressure 232 that strips the compressed bricks from the molds after a 30-minute pause. A pause designed to enable the compressed bricks to settle into their shapes with sharper edges and augmented density. Compression and ejection forces are exerted via an actuating mechanism 240, equipped with a leverage arm 241.

In the short, subtitled YouTube video below, the FabBRICK® inventor and CEO, Clarisse Merlet, presents the manufacturing process, the advantages, and rationale of her invention.  

Note

* A problematic situation that has been quantified as a 4 to 5.8-million-ton surplus of used clothing, and/or waste textiles, discarded each year in Europe alone (European Environmental Agency, 2024).

**A manual version of the press is described in the patent, with the specification that an automated version would clearly still fall within the scope of the invention.

References
FabBRICK® (website)

https://www.fab-brick.com/en

FabBRICK® (Instagram)

https://www.instagram.com/fab.brick/?hl=en

Staff (2024). Management of used and waste textiles in Europe’s circular economy. European Environmental Agency (EEA).
https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/publications/management-of-used-and-waste-textiles-in-europes-circular-economy

Transforming used textiles into bricks (Nov. 8, 2021). Youtube video [3:51].

https://youtu.be/3UrBgMf1554?si=IjphvVUrk474itm2

Mitumba* - A story of used clothing.

 Copyright © Fançoise Herrmann

The documentary, Textile Mountain, produced by Make Europe sustainable for all** shows the impact of the 4 million-ton surplus of used clothing in the world. 70% of which is sold in bales to sub-Saharan Africa. 50% of which is in such a bad state, it ends up in dumps on riverside beds, the sides of roads, or in large fields, such as the well-known, 30-acre, ‘Dandora Dumpsite’ (mountain), on the outskirts of Nairobi (in Kenya).  

The remaining ‘re-usable’ mitumba that floods African markets also ends up canceling all local textile production, since no one can compete with the price or quantity of mitumba. In response to this situation, the documentary highlights two exemplary European solutions to textile waste.  

• ISATIÓ,  a company that uses the principles of a circular economy to upcycle fabric samples into high-quality fashion products, in Brussels, Belgium.
• Nuw Wardrobe, a fashion exchange app and social networking community for sharing clothes, in Dublin, Ireland.

As Annie Leonard, founder and author of The Story of Stuff project puts it: There is no such thing as ‘away’. When you throw something away, it must go somewhere.

-----------

Note

* mitumba is the Swahili term for 'used clothing imported from abroad'.

** Make Europe sustainable for all (MESA), a three-year Development,  Education and Awareness-raising (DEAR) project, combining the expertise and experience of 25 partners from 14 EU countries, EU and global networks. MESA was designed to increase awareness of roles and responsibilities of EU citizens and policymakers in creating a sustainable future for all. The project began in July 2017, and ended in July 2020.

Reference

ISATIÓ (Instagram)

https://www.instagram.com/isatiodesign/

Leonard, A. (2011). The Story of Suff: The Impact of Overconsumption on the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-And How We Can Make It Better. New York, NY: Free Press.
Nuw (Instagram)
https://www.instagram.com/wearenuw/

Textile Mountain (website)
https://www.textilemountainfilm.com/
Textile Mountain (YouTube video in English) [21:39] - European Environmental Bureau (May 29, 2020).  

https://youtu.be/UC4oFmX8tHw 
Textile Mountain (Youtube video available with subtitles in the following languages)

Spanish (ES): https://youtu.be/NSmlaUrWDdo

German (DE): https://youtu.be/zrG3IKUIXjE

French (FR): https://youtu.be/eT46b_CbxZg

Dutch (NL): https://youtu.be/eQGyWpiE0Ok

Italian (IT): https://youtu.be/bLKe6pVp0-k

Portuguese (PT): https://youtu.be/Zk6QoA8iWW0

Slovenian (SL): https://youtu.be/j7lO6vWX6H4

Romanian (RO): https://youtu.be/hsm-MZCrevY

Czech (CZ): https://youtu.be/6bQdoKn3Na8

Polish (PL): https://youtu.be/N1aapJKjJik

The Story of Stuff (website)
https://www.storyofstuff.org/

A New Year

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

My Smilebox Creation

Terminology – WOTTIES 2025 – Cambridge Dictionary shortlisted Words of the Year.

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Cambridge Dictionary shortlisted and defined the following terms, all related to Artificial Intelligence, as competing entries for the Word of the Year 2025. 

"slop: content on the internet that is of very low quality, especially when it is created by artificial intelligence.  

pseudonymization: a process in which information that relates to a particular person, for example a name or email address, is changed to a number or name that has no meaning so that it is impossible to see who the information relates to.

memeify: to turn an event, image, person etc. into a meme (= an idea, joke, image, video, etc. that is spread very quickly on the internet.)"

Cambridge Dictionary also tracked the emergence of the following terms in  in 2025, providing the following definitions and usage examples:

"glazing is the excessive use of praise or flattery, especially by AI chatbots, in a way that seems insincere and artificial.    

Example: When the chatbot’s responses lean too far into glazing, it immediately sounds my alarm bells.    

 bias is the object of a fan’s stanning, or excessive devotion to a singer, band or other media star. It is used especially by fans of the South Korean music genre K-pop.    

Example: My bias is V from BTS – he has the best outfits!    

 vibey describes a place that has a good vibe.    

Example: The place is vibey, has a great buzz, and is perfect for people watching.    

doom spending is the activity of spending money that you cannot afford in order to make yourself feel better. People sometimes engage in it when they feel anxious and uncertain about the future.    

Example: Although doom spending may provide short-term emotional relief, it can also have a long-term impact on your financial stability."

More than 6000 words were added to the Cambridge Dictionary in 2025.  Among these new words:

"delulu: a play on the word delusional, means ‘believing things that are not real or true, usually because you choose to’. 

Example:  In March 2025, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese used the Gen-Z phrase “delulu with no solulu” in a speech in parliament.

tradwife: short for traditional wife – ‘a married woman, especially one who posts on social media, who stays at home doing cooking, cleaning, etc. and has children that she takes care of’ – reflects a growing, controversial Instagram and TikTok trend that embraces traditional gender roles.

Example: Hannah Neeleman of Ballerina Farm has been dubbed the queen of tradwifery. 

snackable, used to describe content that you can read or play in small amounts or for a short time, reflects our ever-shrinking attention spans. 

mouse jiggler, a device or piece of software used to make it seem as though you are working when you are not. 

forever chemical, refers to ‘artificial chemicals that are used to make many different products, that stay in the environment for a long time and are harmful to the health of people and animals’."

Reference

'Parasocial' is Cambridge Dictionary's Word of the Year.

https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/parasocial-is-cambridge-dictionary-word-of-the-year-2025